Oral Answers to Questions

Charles Kennedy: I think that we all knew about that latter point. It is nice to hear that the Justice Secretary can get a word in edgeways, given the plethora of Ministers that he has assembled round about him. He will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the great electoral reformers of recent years, with the number of systems that he has introduced at different levels in different places. When he published the Government's review of electoral systems, to which he referred, he said that it was to "inform the current debate". If so, why is there is no specific mention of electoral reform in the White Paper, in the Government's draft constitutional reform Bill, or in the next steps of governance process? Is not that a bit of an oversight in terms of informing the debate? Why not extend the joyous Scottish experience of the single transferable vote for local government south of the border?

Mark Pritchard: On Christmas eve 2006, my constituent Mr. David George, a serving police officer in the West Mercia police force, was brutally attacked and kicked unconscious, and needed hospital treatment. The offender was subsequently caught, prosecuted and sentenced to 14 months in prison. Does the Justice Secretary share my outrage and the outrage of my constituents Mr. and Mrs. George, who were informed only last week that the culprit had been released, having served only 12 weeks behind bars? Is this the Justice Secretary's new definition of punishment?

Alan Beith: What steps is the Secretary of State taking to discharge his duty to represent the Isle of Man Government in their dispute with the Icelandic Government over the failed Kaupthing bank? Will he initiate wider discussions as to whether loan assistance to the Isle of Man Government would enable depositors in that bank, including UK depositors, to get some of their money?

Jack Straw: I say again that there are a whole series of exclusions from the end of custody licence scheme, and they include serious violent and sexual offenders. I wish that no alleged reoffending had occurred by anyone released under the scheme, but the fact that the number is so low—1 per cent. of the total—indicates that those who made the assessments and constructed the scheme did as well overall as it was possible to do in the circumstances in which it was necessary to introduce it.

Joan Ruddock: Before setting out my reasons for tabling the new clause, I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas), who led on all the earlier stages of the Bill, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the discussions in Cabinet.
	International aviation and shipping have long been contentious issues in relation to climate change and the subject of much Back-Bench interest, as illustrated by the huge support for the early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths). The Government agree that action to reduce emissions from international aviation and shipping will be vital to global efforts to tackle climate change, which is why we are taking forward a range of measures to reduce the impact of international aviation and shipping on the environment.
	Discussions on including international aviation and shipping in a post-2012 regime under the Kyoto principle have begun, and the UK is actively lobbying for support within the international community. Following pressure from the UK, legislation to include aviation in the European Union's emissions trading scheme has been signed off in Europe, and it is expected to save about 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. We are also working with the International Civil Aviation Organisation on international aviation and climate change to try to reach agreement on targets that will drive increased action on emissions in the aviation sector. We continue to press for an international emissions trading scheme for the maritime sector under the International Maritime Organisation.
	The Government recognise the need to give serious consideration to how emissions from international aviation and shipping are approached in the Climate Change Bill. That is why we agreed to the approach proposed by the other place: that either those emissions should be included in the Bill's targets and budgets within five years of Royal Assent or an explanation should be laid before Parliament as to why that has not been done. I want to attach as much certainty and transparency as possible to this requirement, and Amendment No. 36 would do exactly that. It would change the deadline for inclusion or explanation from within five years to 31 December 2012. That definite date is nearly a year sooner than what is currently provided for in the Bill. Furthermore, in response to the views of the shadow Committee on Climate Change, new clause 15 places a new duty on the committee to advise the Secretary of State on the consequences of including emissions from international aviation and emissions from international shipping in the targets and budgets. The committee would be required to provide that advice at the same time as it provides its advice on each carbon budget. That requirement would begin in 2011, when the committee advises on the level of the 2023 to 2027 budget, and would apply every time it advises on carbon budgets thereafter. The duty would remain in place to the extent that emissions from international aviation and shipping were not included within the Bill's targets. If emissions from international aviation were included in the future, the Committee would still be under a duty to provide advice on international shipping emissions, but if, at some point, all emissions were included, the advice duty would no longer apply.

William Cash: Would the Minister care to comment on a problem that could easily arise if, on the one hand, the Committee has a legal duty to give effect to the provisions that she has mentioned and, on the other, clause 6 gives the Secretary of State a power to amend in the light of European law? What would happen if European law said one thing and the committee, which had a duty to give advice to the Secretary of State, said another? Which would prevail?

Joan Ruddock: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about how important it is for the UK to be in the lead. I do not know what the Danish opinion of us is, but there is competition between our countries at times, not least in respect of offshore wind. I understand that we have been very active in the IMO, that we have made proposals and that we have made funds available to assist in this process. We want to do our best, and I take the right hon. Gentleman's comments seriously.
	I was explaining how the duty would cease to exist if all the emissions were included in an international agreement. The shadow committee has been considering this question in some depth. Lord Turner's recent letter to the Secretary of State gave his view that
	"the scope of the Climate Change Bill should not be extended to include international aviation and shipping".
	His reason was that it was
	"not clear how international shipping emissions could be sensibly included in UK budgets".
	He added that although
	"there are methodologies that could sensibly allocate emissions to the UK level (e.g. bunker fuels), these differ from the methodology that has been proposed for entry of aviation into EU ETS. We do not believe that the EU ETS methodology is an appropriate basis for inclusion of international aviation in UK".

Michael Weir: Did not Lord Turner also say that aviation and shipping should be included in the 80 per cent. target? If they are not to be included in the budget, how will that be reflected in the 80 per cent. target and what will be the impact of that?

Graham Stuart: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; she has been extremely generous. Will she share with the House what she expects will be the cumulative impact of aviation and shipping emissions between now and 2050, as currently measured by the Government? She will know that, in any long-term policy to reduce emissions, the important thing is the cumulative budget between now and then. What amounts are we talking about, and what share would they take of the overall budget allowed for the UK?

Justine Greening: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Will she clarify how the Government will track emissions? As she knows, an important decision on Heathrow is coming up. According to the Government, the emissions associated with that policy will include emissions only from outgoing flights, not from incoming flights. Common sense should tell us that extra incoming flights would not be able to land if the airport were not expanded. Will she accept that in Government policy, what is important is the decisionable part of emissions? How will she approach issues such as Heathrow? In such cases, if emissions are not calculated correctly, we will take the wrong decision.

Joan Ruddock: As the hon. Lady will know, a decision has not yet been taken on Heathrow. When I continue with my speech, I will make it very clear how we are approaching the issue of emissions. I will also make it clear that if emissions are contained within the EU trading process, for example, the cap will determine what the emissions are and how the matter will be dealt with. If she will let me continue, our position will become much clearer.
	To answer an earlier question, there are currently no UK Government forecasts of emissions from UK international shipping. That is because the nature of the shipping industry makes recording shipping emissions particularly difficult, and there are a number of data constraints. The Government continue to seek improvements to the evidence base on international shipping emissions, principally through our role at the IMO. I therefore cannot accept amendment No. 69 or new clause 14, but I hope that the House will accept my firm commitment that we will continue to publish our projections on aviation emissions regularly.
	Amendments Nos. 68 and 72 would require the Government and the Committee on Climate Change to take into account projected greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation and shipping when making any decisions relating to carbon budgets; that answers an earlier question. Amendment No. 68 makes specific reference to the projections that would be required by amendment No. 69. As I have explained, we do not agree that it is right to legislate for the publication of those projections.
	However, I am pleased to say that we can accept amendment No. 72 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley). The Government believe that when setting or advising on budgets, due regard should be given to emissions from international aviation and shipping; my right hon. Friend and the shadow Committee on Climate Change have made that clear. We are saying that we will have due regard to emissions from aviation and shipping, as the Committee recommended, but we cannot account for them domestically at present. There are a few technical problems with amendment No. 72; for example, it refers to "budget" rather than budgetary periods, and refers not to the Committee on Climate Change, but only to the Secretary of State. It does not refer to "targeted" greenhouse gases, which is how such gases are defined in the Bill. The Government will therefore return, before final consideration in the Lords, with a version of the amendment that has benefited from parliamentary counsel's redrafting; I hope that all parties can agree to that.
	Amendment No. 3 would simply require emissions from international aviation and shipping to be included in the Bill's targets and budgets within five years of Royal Assent. That would have to be done, and nothing else could be done. We all agree that we are talking about global issues, and that a global solution would be the best way forward; I hope that I have made that clear. Such a solution would be much more difficult if we had a domestic deadline for deciding what the UK's fair share was. It is possible for us to reach international agreement, through the United Nations framework convention on climate change, the IMO or the International Civil Aviation Organisation, that the best way to deal with international aviation or shipping emissions is through a sectoral approach, rather than through allocating such emissions to individual countries. In fact, that is one of the approaches already under discussion. The point is about methodologies. We could end up with a completely different proposal, so it would not be appropriate for us to make a unilateral decision. Indeed, we are already starting to see such an approach at EU level, where it is likely that under the EU emissions trading scheme, aviation emissions will be allocated to airlines rather than to individual member states.

David Howarth: I thank the Minister for giving way, perhaps at the right part of her speech now. Is it not the case that if we in the UK take the lead, we will shape the international debate and push the final solution of the problem to a position closer to what is in our interests, rather than in other countries' interests, whereas if we leave the negotiations to others, we will not do that?

Joan Ruddock: I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that there is no question of leaving the negotiations to others. We are right there in the forefront of the negotiations. It is the UK Government who pushed for the inclusion of international aviation and shipping emissions in the EU trading scheme. We succeeded in persuading other member states that that should be done, and it will be done. Adopting a measure in the Bill that could be completely out of line, as the amendments suggest, with what we are negotiating in Europe is obviously the wrong thing to do.
	The questions concerning shipping emissions are even more complex. If we were to include shipping emissions in any of the existing agreements or future agreements such as global agreements, we would have even more problems than we clearly have with airlines. I have outlined how we might deal with aviation through the European trading scheme, but the difficulty with ships is that they can go for many weeks without refuelling, and can take on fuel from tankers in international waters. If we based our calculations only on fuel that has been sold in the UK, it would appear that shipping emissions declined over the past 10 years and then began to rise again. However, we know that that is not the case. We know that shipping has continued to increase, so we must assume that the emissions have increased as well. Clearly, relying on bunker fuels is not the answer.

John Gummer: I am sympathetic to the concept that the Minister advances: that her hands should not be tied by writing into the Bill the kinds of answers that may well be the opposite of what will be in our interests or in the interests of reducing emissions. Does she agree, however, that the concomitant is that the Government must be extremely loud about the negotiations, making sure that people realise that we are taking the lead and that there is no excuse for delay on this front? Shipping is hugely important to the United Kingdom and hugely important if we are to do something about emissions.

Gregory Barker: We warmly welcome the Government's change of heart and measured response in including emissions from international aviation and shipping in the Bill. We support new clause 15 and its accompanying amendments Nos. 36, 42, 43 and 50, which I understand are important tidying-up measures. Although we also recognise the real and practical difficulties, which the Minister has explained, of including aviation and shipping and although we acknowledge the danger of perverse incentives if we get the issue wrong, we think it right that aviation and shipping should be included.
	Conservative Front Benchers have consistently argued that aviation and shipping should not be exempt from accounting for the pollution for which their sectors are responsible. Furthermore, as the Minister said, not including aviation in the Bill would have perverse incentives. For example, it would incentivise an individual passenger, from a carbon point of view, to take a short-haul flight to Paris rather than the Eurostar. That cannot be right.
	We should also be mindful of the positive way in which the shipping sector and certain responsible airlines have contributed to the debate: they have made important and constructive suggestions on the way forward. We must not forget that shipping is among the most carbon-efficient forms of heavy transport. Sea freight emits between 30 g and 90 g of CO2 per tonne of freight per kilometre, whereas the equivalent figure for road freight is between 130g and 190g, and that for aviation is obviously much, much more.
	We must therefore be cautious about always twinning aviation and shipping in this debate, as their carbon efficiency profiles contrast and they face different challenges specific to their sectors. We all acknowledge that there are difficulties with the measurement and apportionment of these emissions. However, it is important that we do not allow such issues of methodology, complex as they are, to let us lose sight of the principal aim of the Bill: to achieve a net reduction in emissions across the whole UK economy in sufficient proportion for us to play our fair part in keeping man-made global warming below the dangerous 2° level.
	The necessity of eventually including all sectors of our economy in that task was reconfirmed to us earlier this month by the advice of Lord Adair Turner's Committee on Climate Change. Mindful of that advice, we are sympathetic to amendments Nos. 68 and 69, tabled by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths). We are also sympathetic to amendment No. 3 and new clause 14, tabled by the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb).
	Methodology is crucial, so the Government need to publish their methodology for making their aviation and shipping emission projections, as would be required by new clause 14. That is particularly important to us. We welcome the announcement just now that the Government have taken on board the intent embodied in amendment No. 72. The right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) has done a great deal of work: he has campaigned outside the House and brought together a large consensus on the measure. We welcome the fact that the Government are prepared to take the issue on board and, having redrafted it with the help of parliamentary counsel, bring it back to the House of Lords. That is typical of the spirit in which the Bill has gone through the House.
	Having made our support for this proposal clear, I should like to sound a note of caution regarding the definition of aviation and shipping that the Government have chosen. Although we welcome the fact that they intend to include emissions from aviation and shipping, the measurement of emissions from the movement of goods and passengers should account for all stages of the journey rather than merely singling out the carbon footprint of flights and sea journeys to and from the United Kingdom. In that way, we could avoid unintended consequences such as encouraging more polluting methods of travel outside the UK. My party is committed to working with the Government in their efforts to secure the all-important international agreements on aviation and shipping emissions that are crucial if we are to crack this problem.
	The Bill has come a long way since it was first introduced in another place last year. Now, on Report, one of the last outstanding totemic issues is finally being dealt with. If we can come to an agreement on this, it will turn the Bill from good legislation into world-class legislation. However, the caveats on definitions that Conservative Members spoke about at length in Committee and in the other place still remain. Although we are concerned about the definition of aviation and shipping, rather than our chosen definition of international trade and transport, we are not opposed to including aviation and shipping in the carbon budgets from the outset. Our concern is rooted in our wish to ensure that we do not, through well-meaning but poorly designed legislation, offer a perverse incentive to use more carbon-intensive modes of transport, such as road freight, over the more efficient moving of goods by sea. For example, if shipping becomes heavily regulated, particularly unilaterally, there might be an incentive for ships to dock at Rotterdam—or worse still, Istanbul—and then drive across the continent to enter this country via the channel tunnel. That is why we argued in Committee for aviation and shipping to be described as international trade and transport. We wish to prevent any system of measurement from being skewed in favour of more carbon-intensive methods of transport, which could happen if shipping and aviation are included without reference to other modes of transportation.
	Let me give some practical examples. If one were importing oranges from Spain into the UK and sent them over on lorries, only the short leg of the journey, by ferry, would be included in the UK's carbon allowance. If one sent them by sea, the whole journey would be counted, making transporting oranges from Spain by sea far more carbon-expensive. That would create a significant incentive for the use of road freight over sea freight, despite its being many times more carbon-intensive. If national-level emissions trading schemes were in existence through the transit states, the disincentive to use road freight would be strong enough to deter that, but if we introduced our system before some or all of our neighbouring European transit states, Britain would perversely incentivise the movement of goods away from direct shipping and towards the more polluting form of road transport. Similarly, when importing goods from China, the best way in terms of cost and the environment is for the container to be shipped directly to the UK. If we define only aviation and shipping without reference to other means of importing goods, that could mean it would make economic sense to ship goods only as far as Rotterdam and then move them by lorry into the UK in order to minimise the amount of carbon officially being counted.
	I hope I have made the point sufficiently clear without sounding as though we are opposed to the inclusion of aviation and shipping, as per the amendment, but it is very important. We are in favour of these measures, and we have always argued that there should be no sectoral exemptions for aviation and shipping, but the definition of the process can still be improved. We would be keen to work closely with the Government on establishing a means of description that is more effective and would secure the international agreements on aviation and shipping that are vital if we are to find a truly holistic solution to this very important international problem.

Gregory Barker: That is a far more concise way of putting the rather laboured argument that I was trying to make from the Dispatch Box.
	This is a complex area. It is not beyond our ken to crack it, but some very sensible points have been made from colleagues on the Opposition Benches about the unintended consequences of including aviation and shipping. We do not want to lose sight of the principal aim of including those sectors in a way that makes them responsible for their own carbon pollution, but my right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and with his experience as a former Secretary of State and from his considerable business career, he is well placed to understand the complexities and dangers that could be posed to our competitive position. That should not, however, prevent us from offering to work constructively with the Government on the matter; if they unable to do it, an incoming Conservative Government would certainly want to work closely with the aviation and shipping industry to ensure that a satisfactory answer was reached in order to allow carbon measurements to be made, but in a way that did not harm unduly our international competitive position.

Elliot Morley: I warmly welcome the contribution to the debate by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, particularly her acceptance of amendment No. 72, which stands in my name. I would like to emphasise that it is only in my name because it was tabled very late, and I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths), who has been very active in this matter. I am pleased to support the amendments that stand in his name and those of many hon. Friends, many of whom are present.
	My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary knows that the issue we are discussing is of key interest to many members of the public and non-governmental organisations, and I agree with the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) that the improvements to the Bill and the scrutiny as it has gone through the parliamentary process have turned it into a piece of world-class legislation that gives a strong international lead. By accepting the amendment to take aviation and shipping into account, the Bill will send a clear signal internationally that including such emissions is the way that we have to go.
	I accept that there has also to be international agreement on the matter. It was a great failing of the original Kyoto protocol that the bunker fuel agreement was not included. We all know the reasons for that—it was not possible to get international agreement, particularly given the resistance from the United States and others. We all know that whatever the outcome of the forthcoming elections in the US there will be a change of position, and I hope that that transfers to including aviation and shipping in the post-Kyoto 2012 framework, as we must. The European Union emissions trading scheme helps in that respect, and it may drive that change.
	I would confirm what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said: the agreement on including aviation took place under the UK presidency of the EU. It was a British initiative and a British priority. The UK presidency managed to get that agreement, which I believe to be so important. I also understand the point that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle made about perverse incentives, although the logic of that is to include all sectors of the economy—at some point, surface transport must be included in the EU ETS—but those are matters for future negotiation.
	I reinforce the point that many groups are pleased about this. I acknowledge the contribution of the Friends of the Earth Big Ask campaign, which included the two key elements: the 80 per cent. target, which has been conceded, and the inclusion of aviation and shipping, which is being conceded tonight. That will strengthen the Bill; the two issues are vital.

Steve Webb: Although we welcome the new clause and the Government's acceptance of the spirit of amendment No. 72, which the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) tabled, we remain concerned that the guarantees that the nation—and, indeed, the planet—seeks from the British Government about aviation and shipping are not firm enough. Although we may have confidence in the Under-Secretary and the new Secretary of State—any Secretary of State whose first act is to add his name to a Liberal Democrat amendment cannot be all bad—what about their heirs and successors? Can we be confident that future Secretaries of State, who are perhaps not so committed, will be bound by the amendments? We contend that they will not and that, in addition to the new clause, we need new clause 14. We welcome the supportive comments of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) about new clause 14, on which I suspect we will test the opinion of the House later.
	We are concerned about new clause 15 because of its advisory nature. "Advise" or "advice" appear nine times in it—it is an entirely advisory clause. That would be fine if the Government were bound by the advice but, by definition, one is not bound by advice. Amendment No. 3 would remove the opt-out. The Government have the option after five years of saying, "This is all terribly difficult—we're not going to do it." Our worry is that aviation and shipping are so important that, if five years of the best brains around the globe getting together cannot crack the problem, we are genuinely in trouble. We do not want to give the Government the option after five years of slipping out a written statement on the last day of a parliamentary Session to claim that they had tried hard but could not include aviation and shipping because it was too difficult. There is not enough of a guarantee that those matters will be taken into account.
	Although I am beginning to understand the theology of such issues, I cannot understand why the new clause and amendment No. 72, as redrafted, guarantee anything. They are a nudge and a wink and a hint from a well-disposed Secretary of State and Under-Secretary, but they guarantee nothing, especially when Ministers change and others may not be so committed. We therefore need to beef up those amendments.
	New clause 14 states that the Government need to provide projections on aviation and shipping. We welcome the Minister's assurance that the projections on aviation will be forthcoming and updated, but simply saying that shipping is too difficult, which is essentially the position, is inadequate. We need to resolve those difficulties. We need an approximation to the best guess. Doing that is not a science; it is an art. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) said, doing nothing is likely to be an awful lot further away from the optimal solution than having an approximation, an imputation or an assumption.
	Our second concern is about the role of national leadership. I fully accept that in time everything will need to be done multilaterally, but we are not playing a game in which we cannot make a move until everybody else has moved. We are talking about a vital issue on which we need to lead by example and bring others with us. If we say, "We're not going to include these things until everybody else does or until we've decided altogether how to do it", the clock will be ticking in the meantime. That is our profound concern.

Steve Webb: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. From our perspective we need to get on with decarbonising the economy. The goal of an ever-increasing supply of oil is literally nonsense and should certainly not be an aim of Government policy.
	The point that I made in an intervention on the Minister is that it might be great that the Department of Energy and Climate Change sets such bold targets, but as long as the Department for Transport, for example, continues to act as if it were a wholly owned subsidiary of BAA, we will not achieve what we need to. That is why it is vital to bring aviation and shipping within the scope of the Bill, so that the other bits of Government, which are perhaps not quite as well disposed towards tackling climate change as the Department of Energy and Climate Change is, are brought into line. The sooner we do that, the smaller the chance that irreversible decisions will be taken on airport expansion—decisions that would undermine the goal that we all share of tackling climate change effectively.
	We welcome new clause 15 and the advice that will be forthcoming, but we simply do not believe that it goes far enough. In addition, we need the projections provided for in our new clause 14 and a calculation of what that means for non-aviation and shipping carbon emissions. The Minister's view seems to be that the rest of the economy can just take the hit, because as long as the grand total is okay, we are all happy. However, the rest of the economy might have a view on taking more of a hit than aviation and shipping simply because aviation and shipping were not included in the budgets.
	There is an equity issue, too. We might have a view, for example, on how fair it is to expect manufacturing to take the entire hit because aviation and shipping have been allowed to run away with their emissions. There is an equity issue to do with the balance of reducing emissions, not only at household level but between different sectors of the economy. Favourable treatment towards one sector, which would be likely if we did not bring it within the Bill, is undesirable for us all.

John Gummer: It seems to me that the Government should be congratulated on bringing forward these new clauses. We Opposition Members are very pleased to support them. It also seems to me that the Government are in a difficult position. On the one hand, they cannot build into the Bill a unilateral system that might be wholly different from what emerges from negotiation. That is a perfectly reasonable Government position, but if it is to be tenable, the Government must give the House—not just now, but throughout the coming months and years—a real understanding of their commitment to doing the things that will make a reality of these new clauses.

John Gummer: I wish that the hon. Gentleman, with whom I often agree, had listened more carefully to my argument. I gave a series of examples to which the Opposition were committed. It was therefore not unreasonable for me to suggest that if the Government wished to gain the universal support that I believe will be necessary if the Bill is be effective, it would be helpful if they clarified their approach to some of the key matters that are before us. The expansion of Felixstowe, which I declare as an interest in my constituency, is not a matter before us; the matter before us is the Government's decision on Stansted, and their decision on Heathrow.
	I know very well that the Minister is not the person making the decision in this instance, and also that, if she were, she would make that decision in a way of which I would greatly approve. However, I do not consider it unreasonable for me to say to her that it is imperative for the Government to take seriously some of the decisions which we understand—notwithstanding the essentially light touch of the new clause—will be translated into action.
	I want to say a little about unilateralism as it applies to aviation and shipping. It may be suggested that Britain should do nothing that might put her in a less powerful position in terms of competition, and in general I think that that is true, but I hope the Minister will not be put off doing anything on that basis, or we shall find ourselves unable to take the lead that we have taken. The Climate Change Bill is unilateral in a very real sense, and so it should be.
	Although I cannot be accused by anyone of being unilateralist in the sense that the Minister was but—I believe—is not now, I can at least say that unilateralism, in the sense of being a step ahead of others and helping them to make their decisions, is often necessary. T.S. Eliot once said "Being a step ahead of the rest is something that deserves congratulation and you are a hero; two steps ahead, and watch out for the men in white coats." There is some truth in that. I do not want us to get into a position in which we have so damaged our international ability to trade and compete that we suffer unilaterally, but we do need to ensure that we are taking a step ahead of the rest.

John Gummer: With accustomed care, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you enabled me to get off my chest what I needed to, but did not allow me to proceed too far down that avenue, and I shall not do so.
	Let me return to the difference between shipping and aviation. I ask the Minister to concentrate on shipping in an important way. Shipping can provide the most carbon-efficient mechanism for transporting goods, and we therefore must take care in how we deal with it. However, it is not like aviation in a number of other ways. First, the EU trading scheme does not easily apply to shipping; it is difficult to see how we can use that as a mechanism in the same way as we can with aviation. Secondly, a great deal can be achieved in the shipping industry through taking steps that are not open to the aviation industry. For example, if it were demanded that over a short period ships increasingly used a higher quality of fuel, that could rapidly reduce the carbon impact, but that step is not open to aviation in the same way or over the same time scale.

John Gummer: The hon. Gentleman is right, and I pressed the Minister earlier about this issue, because there is a feeling abroad that we have not been sufficiently hard-working in this area and that we have failed to produce as much pressure as we should. It is thought that perhaps we should ginger up our role in international shipping, because we do not want the EU to set proper standards for the kind of fuel that is provided for, and used by, ships docking at its ports, including Felixstowe in my constituency, only to find that they therefore unload outside the EU, such as in Morocco or Turkey. We need to find ways of achieving the ends we want without producing untoward results, but that does not excuse us from being seen to be an effective pressure on the international shipping community, which in many respects wishes to be pressed and wants to move. The Government must show that they are doing that.
	My last point on this issue refers to a question raised by the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb). He talked about the need to include shipping and aviation as a matter of equity. That may be the case, but I think there is a more important reason: if we do not have a system that covers the whole of commercial and industrial life, we will automatically create damaging kinds of discrimination and diversion. There is a commercial reason for doing this, and we ought to be citing it; otherwise, there will be untoward consequences. If we leave out shipping and aviation, not only will other areas be disproportionately affected, but if the carbon costs of imports are not included, businesses that rely on imports will be able to compete disproportionately with businesses that manufacture at home.
	I do not want to be protectionist, but I do want to have equality in this commercial context, so that we ensure that the home-produced product—whether it be food, an area in which I am particularly interested, or manufactured goods—is not disproportionately affected because those businesses are paying the cost of the carbon that they use, whereas other businesses are not paying the cost of the carbon that is used when their product is flown or shipped in from a far-away country. I therefore beg the Minister to take seriously the point that this is not only a matter of theoretical equality, much as I believe in that as an issue. It is a matter of commercial justice and a crucial one for an island that has lost much of its manufacturing ability and ought to gain much back.

Nia Griffith: This issue is about counting and monitoring, which is why it is important that we include mechanisms in the Bill such as making provision on advice and listening to the Committee on Climate Change. Those are the tools that we are using. The monitoring and reporting processes, and the targets that we put in place, will make us think about how we achieve the necessary reductions in emissions and how we create a low-carbon economy.
	Motor manufacturers came to the Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill saying, "You tell us what we have to do and when we have to do it by, and we will need to take decisive actions." The same applies in respect of aviation and shipping; they need to be included in international debate, because we need to set the parameters on an international scale. If enough of the powerful economies say that ships can come to their countries only if they meet X, Y and Z conditions, a sea change—if I may say that—will begin to take place in how boats and ships are fuelled.

Tim Yeo: I am glad to see the Minister nodding her assent. As I mentioned in my intervention, I also hope that the Government will lead the debate on how to accelerate a switch by the shipping industry to some of the more efficient, less polluting and more low-carbon methods referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). Britain is a great maritime nation, and the shipping industry would respond to a lead from the Government on these matters. Indeed, the industry is looking for a lead, and the evidence given to my Committee this morning suggested that while it is not very concerned about the precise policies, it would like to know how the Government intend to accelerate those changes.
	I also urge the Government to consider what more can be done to speed up a switch from domestic flights to lower carbon alternatives. There is a strong probability that those countries that have a low-carbon transport infrastructure, such as France has, and that Spain and others are rapidly developing through their high-speed rail networks, will enjoy a huge economic and commercial advantage in 10 or 15 years. Because those projects take a long time to build, it will be too late for us if we wake up in 2020 and wish that we had implemented our own when we first realised that it was important.
	Many of the supporters of the Bill and the Government's approach are dismayed by what other parts of the Government appear to be doing, because they are moving in the opposite direction. Reference has already been made to Heathrow, but I wish to refer to Stansted, an issue in which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may have a passing interest. Only two weeks ago, the Government approved a substantial increase in the number of flights from Stansted. That was an environmentally catastrophic decision for my constituents in South Suffolk, for people in East Anglia and for Britain. It was taken at a time when usage of Stansted is falling—the figures for 2008 are lower than those for 2007—so there was no reason for that decision. There was no pressure to make it, especially as the low-cost airlines that dominate the airport are experiencing a drastic change to their business prospects and business model.
	The replacement of domestic flights with low-carbon alternative transport choices would not harm Britain's competitive position internationally. In many respects, it would help it. For example, it would free slots at Heathrow for the introduction of strategically important long-haul international routes. While I welcome the Government's fresh approach on aviation as reflected in the Bill, the amendments and the Minister's remarks, I urge them to be bolder. In particular, I hope that the Minister and the new Department—I wish it a successful future—will bring colleagues in the Department for Transport into line.

Peter Lilley: I will give way in a moment, and especially to the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen).
	I have reservations about the certainty with which some people adopt the scientific case behind global alarmism, but I am equally uncertain that it is necessarily wrong, so I am quite prepared to take out an insurance policy against the possibility that we will face global warming, just as I insure my house against the possibility of fire. However, I ask the House whether it is sensible to buy into an insurance policy whose premiums could be twice the value of one's house—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Oh dear. The hon. Gentleman is enticing the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) towards the wider aspects of the Bill again. I must remind the House that we want to make progress on to other matters, and we should therefore stick strictly to the terms of the amendments before us.

Peter Lilley: I will do just that and avoid discussing with the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) my experience of Cambridge, which was splendid. I instead return to the measure before us, which asks the Committee on Climate Change to assess the cost of including aviation and shipping in the Bill. However, the new clause does not say how those assessments are to be made. We must assume that they are to be made on the basis that Lord Stern used to assess the costs and benefits in the report to which the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) referred, or on the basis used in the impact assessment that the Government put before the House, although that assessment refuses to give us any costings specifically on aviation and shipping.
	It is interesting that the impact assessment totally contradicts Lord Stern, who said that the costs of the measure, including aviation, would be far short of the benefits. Of course, he only reached that conclusion by discounting the future at such a low rate that the benefits exceeded the costs. According to Nordhaus, the leading valuator of this sort of methodology, half the benefits that Sir Nicholas Stern takes into account will not occur until after the year 2800, but so low is his discount rate that they outweigh the costs that we will incur in this century.
	More sensibly, the Government rejected that. I asked them what interest rate they think should be used, and presumably want to use, in the assessments that they require in new clause 15. They say that they are using the traditional, conventional discount rate required by the Treasury of 3.5 per cent. in real terms. That is why their calculations show that the costs are not necessarily much lower than the benefits, and could well be twice as great as the benefits. Presumably, if the Committee follows the Government's methodology, it could reach the same conclusion for aviation and shipping.

Alan Simpson: There is a real danger of the House misleading itself into debates which, although important, are not the debates that should be taking place on the amendments. There are issues to be addressed concerning the methodology of impact assessments, but at this stage the House is being asked to address the principle of the inclusion of the Government's assessment of carbon impacts in the way in which we set our carbon budgets. It is important to bring the debate back to that.
	It is also important not to allow ourselves to conduct a caricature debate about the choices that we face. The choices are not between unilateralism or multilateralism, or between mitigation or adaptation. We will have to do both. When the ship is sinking, the last thing we want to hear is someone running round the decks saying, "No action until there is a global refit." If the ship is sinking, we want action taken on the threat that we face at that time.
	What we need to recognise from the scientific reports, which have been coming to us in their own tsunamis, is that the climate and the planet are the part of the equation that is in the process of taking the most enormous unilateral action. We will have to address huge upheavals in the whole framework of how we consider societies and economies capable of working viably throughout the whole of this century.
	I had hoped that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) would be here for his customary intervention on this issue. The answer to the question about oil is that by the time we come out of the current global financial crisis, two things will be queuing up. The first will be the climate crises already in the pipeline. Secondly, by that time we will probably have passed the peak oil level anyway, and we will have to move to a post-oil economy if we want a viable economy of any sort.
	The question before the House is about whether it is right in principle to include aviation and shipping in how we assess carbon impact. The answer is that it has to be right. It would be absurd for the House to pretend that we can ignore the impact that aviation in particular, and shipping, have on our carbon emissions and the climate damage that we do. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) is right to say that there are domestic implications that need to feed back into our policy on airport expansion. It would be enormously sensible to draw airport expansion to a halt; that would give a hugely important signal to people in this country and internationally about the importance that we place on the environment being the centrepiece of any sustainable economy in the 21st century.

William McCrea: My hon. Friends and I accept that climate change is a serious environmental threat that we face, which requires action. We have to tackle carbon emissions, and it is therefore important that there is an appropriate Bill to do that. Although I have a very sceptical colleague sitting beside me, our party's policy is that the Bill is necessary. However, I do not accept that we can say with authority that man is the sole contributor to the situation. There are those who have over-egged the case and in many ways destroyed the argument, and that has made many people in the community cynical. There are also those who have underestimated the case, and they have not helped the debate either. I believe that global warming is a reality. Scientists have a certain view of the issue; in this House we need to take a balanced view and try to deal with it in a balanced way.
	I should like to draw to the Minister's attention some consequences of these proposals, particularly in the region of the United Kingdom that I come from, Northern Ireland. It is essential to deal with this issue internationally and even-handedly, in conjunction with our European Union partners. It is accepted in Northern Ireland that those who call themselves great Europeans have a wonderful way of taking European legislation and, if it suits them, driving a coach and horses through it and not carrying out what was intended. In the UK—although many see us as bad Europeans in many ways—the Government gold-plate legislation with great zeal and force it on the people.
	There needs to be equity in the provisions made across Europe. There is a case for commercial justice in relation to aviation—in my constituency, for example. I have in my constituency an international airport, Belfast International, which is in direct competition with another international airport that is not many miles away, but happens to be in another EU country. Unlike many other EU countries, we have a land border. I ask the Minister to consider carefully the danger that if we take action unilaterally, rather than right across Europe, we could be on the verge of driving local industry over that border. That would penalise my constituents and my local airport. It is not the business of this United Kingdom Government to penalise their British citizens in Northern Ireland or to direct business to our competitors. There is a genuine fear that there will be discrimination against a region of the UK as regards the aviation industry. I do not believe that the Government intend that to be the outcome of their actions, but it could be, if they do not ensure that there is a balanced and equitable approach across Europe.
	I know that an easy, throwaway statement can be made about transport alternatives and so on. In Northern Ireland, over many years, the trains were removed—most of Northern Ireland is not served by train—and the timing, frequency and availability of buses is not as in other regions of the United Kingdom. If we take people out of cars to deal with the issue, what will they use? A horse and trap? Bicycles? We have to deal with reality, rather than go back into history.
	We have to have a balanced view. I appeal to the Minister concerning aviation and how it relates to the competition faced by the international airport in my constituency, lest we destroy a vital part of our industry, and direct industry away from a region of the United Kingdom. That would not be good for the future of the UK or its industrial prosperity.

Nick Hurd: I rise to give a cautious welcome to the movement by the Government on this important issue, but we must recognise the scale of the journey. We have moved from a situation, in summer 2007, when those of us on the Joint Committee on the draft Bill were listening to a Government who were saying, "We are filing the inclusion of aviation in the 'too difficult' box. We don't need to do it because we aren't required to by our international agreements." The message from the Government in the Bill is now, "We'll tell you if we're going to include aviation and shipping in our international targets by the end of 2012, and if we do it, we'll tell you then how we're going to do it. On the way we'll get some advice from the Committee on Climate Change and publish some projections." The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) was right: there is no absolute obligation for the Government to include aviation and shipping in the carbon budgets or the targets, and we should be quite clear about that.
	It has been a modest journey, but a welcome one. That is why the Bill needs toughening, and I extend a cautious welcome to amendment No. 72, tabled by the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who, sadly, is no longer in his place. It adds value by requiring the Government and the Committee on Climate Change to take into account aviation and shipping in their public deliberations. I am concerned that the phrase "take into account" is too vague, because it can mean anything to any Government—but there has been an improvement.
	We recognise that there are tremendous difficulties in calculation—we have to respect that, and we must not get too far ahead of ourselves in the international process. But this Climate Change Bill is very important. It is a landmark Bill, which sets an international lead as a framework Bill. That is its value. It is a new method of setting targets and monitoring progress against targets. The key innovation in the Bill is not the long-term targets, but the carbon budgets. The rolling carbon budgets will allow us to get a grip on the problem of cumulative carbon emissions—a point forcibly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). It is the cumulative carbon emissions that count, not the absolute carbon emissions at the distant date of 2050.
	The carbon budgets are the key innovation, and we simply cannot undermine them by leaving completely to one side the fastest growing source of emissions, however difficult it is to calculate them. We should take the opportunity to place on record the fact that aviation emissions in the UK have grown by 90 per cent. between 1990 and 2004. The Under-Secretary was unable to answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness about the proportion of future emissions in the carbon budget that the Government think will come from aviation, but she will be aware that there are various estimates from serious people such as the Tyndall Centre and WWF, and the range of projections is between 50 per cent. and 100 per cent. of our carbon budget in 2050. We have to address a serious engine of growth in carbon emissions, and we cannot afford the "out of sight, out of mind" message that we received from the Government 18 months ago.
	As the Under-Secretary well knows, transport, and aviation in particular, is the most difficult in policy terms, partly because there is no obvious short-term technology solution. It does not take much for us to imagine that our children or grandchildren will be driving around in cars that are different from the ones that we drive in, and powered in a different way. We can almost feel the technology—it is out there. But in aviation that is not the case. The best-case scenarios for aviation are for technology products leading to improvements of about 1.5 per cent. a year, which is not enough, given the demand. We are left in very difficult political territory when making policy—having to decide whether we want to manage demand through price mechanisms, taxes or the management of airport capacity.
	The Government are placing all their bets on the European emissions trading scheme—the cap-and-trade scheme. That make me nervous, because in the Environmental Audit Committee we spend a lot of time looking at the emissions trading scheme. It works as a testing mechanism, but it has comprehensively failed to reduce emissions, because a cap-and-trade scheme is only as good as the cap, which is a function of political will. The great concern is whether there will be the political will in 2011, in the face of the mother of all lobbies from the aviation industry, to set a cap that bites. We know that such a cap will have significant implications for the price that consumers will pay for aviation. There will be significant consequences for the price of carbon credits in the system for other industries. This is an extremely difficult policy area.

Barry Gardiner: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be possible to allow an expansion of the aviation industry, and shipping as well, as long as that was taken into account in the carbon budget, as he rightly stressed, with accommodations and increased cuts in those areas? That would, critically, demand that it be possible to quantify exactly what the amount of the contribution was; that was the central point made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) earlier.

Nick Hurd: Absolutely—we need to know what we are dealing with. The hon. Gentleman has painted a gentle and attractive scenario, but it places a lot of faith in the emissions trading system, which is attractive in theory but has not worked in practice, because too much political risk is tied up in it.
	I was making the point that we cannot afford an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude to aviation and shipping, because the policy challenge is too great. It requires the Government of the day to get a grip on it, and the harsh reality is that this Government have been extremely clumsy in the signals that they have sent through their policies on aviation. We have had a clumsy increase in air passenger duty, which has given green taxes a bad name because it was closely associated with the concept of stealth taxes. We seem to be slow-marching towards the wrong decision on Heathrow. It was desperately disappointing that one of the first signals from a new Secretary of State in a new Department was simply to confirm that existing position on Heathrow. The Under-Secretary will be aware that it is hard to persuade those in this country, let alone any other, that we are serious about controlling emissions from aviation if we give the green light to the expansion of the fastest-growing source of emissions. The negative value of that decision far outweighs the relatively small value of the signals being sent in the Bill.

Graham Stuart: This is a question not only of aviation but of shipping. We are a major maritime nation, but little effort has been put in here, or globally, into finding out what the emissions from shipping are, let alone into the investment and leadership that Ministers like to talk about that is needed to transform the efficiency of shipping in terms of emissions. That is a very challenging process in aviation, but probably a lot less so in shipping. However, precious little effort or political will has been applied to that area so far.

Christopher Chope: In a sense, it is a pity that today's business is not subject to any knives, because that means that we are unlikely to reach all the items on our agenda, and there are some important issues to debate later. I shall therefore keep my remarks brief.
	The issue that we are discussing needs to be put into context. A paper that PricewaterhouseCoopers produced, entitled "The world in 2050", projects that the United Kingdom will produce only 1.2 per cent. of global emissions in 2050—without the increased targets in the Bill and without including emissions from shipping and aviation. We must take that into consideration. Even if we eliminated that 1.2 per cent., would it make any difference to the world? I do not think that it would—indeed, the burdens on our economy would be even more enormous than they are already likely to be, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) explained so well.
	My right hon. Friend was one of five who voted against Second Reading. When the history books are written in 2050, people will ask why only five people voted against Second Reading of the ludicrous measure. However, he failed to say that, as we export more of our manufacturing industry, we will depend all the more on international shipping and aviation for our imports. The new clauses therefore deal with matters that are highly relevant to our viability as a nation.
	The TaxPayers Alliance produced an important research note, which shows that, if we achieved an 80 per cent. reduction in emissions, UK gross domestic product in 2050 would have to be 3.8 per cent. lower than it was in 1990. We know of the public dismay and, indeed, even the Prime Minister's concern, about the fact that we have now entered the first quarter of negative growth since 2007. What would 3.8 per cent. negative growth in 2050 compared with 1990 mean for the people of this country? It would be a disaster on a massive scale and unacceptable to the people. Not enough has been done to spell out the implications of the Bill.
	As one examines the measure, one realises that it contains all sorts of loopholes. It would therefore be possible for successor Governments—or even the current Government—to adjust the membership of the committee that is meant to be pushing all of this so that it was then able to use the word "appropriate" to decide that the provisions passed in the Bill were wholly inappropriate as our economy went down the global league table.

Rob Marris: Willing the means does not mean that we will get there and it can be counter-productive. If I challenged my hon. Friend to run 100 m in 14 seconds, for example, she might train and try to do it. If I challenged her to run 100 m in 10.5 seconds, I suspect that she would not even bother to start in training. That will be the position of the electorate, particularly when they see us, rightly and as I hope that we will, including aviation and shipping in the approach to cutting emissions, which we must do, as well as addressing adaptation. However, the thought that will strike many of my constituents is this: "We can't do both, so why should I bother doing anything?"

Michael Weir: I will be relatively brief, as most of the issues have probably been covered by now. I welcome the amendments from the Government, who have moved a long way from where they started. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the Government's amendments and why they were not going slightly further than we would wish.
	I appreciate the difficulties with aviation and shipping. I heard what she said about the possibility of going for a sectoral system, along the lines of the EU emissions trading scheme. I can well see how that might be attractive for aviation, since we are talking about a relatively small number of international airlines flying into the UK. However, I am not sure that that would work so well for shipping, which is a very different industry and may, I suspect, need different treatment. As an aside, the point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) made about ships not always using oil is an interesting one. If I remember my history correctly, the development of warships in the early 20th century led the movement towards the use of oil to power shipping rather than steam or sails, but that is by the by.
	It is important to include shipping, however, because apart from the quantity of emissions in general, there is a problem with shipping, particularly with older ships that use heavy oil, which is very polluting, thereby contributing greatly towards climate change. Aviation also contributes to climate change, but the other day I noticed a report saying that Boeing believed that it would be able to develop biofuels for aircraft within the next few years. Given the problems that have been experienced with biofuels in other areas, however, I am dubious as to how much that will move matters forward.
	Listening to the Minister and appreciating the difficulties, I come close to agreeing with her. However, when she talked about the need to reach international agreement, I heard the call of the long grass, because, to a large extent, that has been the problem until now.
	The right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who is no longer in his place, said that one reason that international shipping and aviation were not included in the Kyoto protocol was simply that international agreement on the issue could not be reached at that time. It seems unlikely that it will be any easier to reach an international agreement now than it was then. Indeed, given that the world is undoubtedly going into a recession—we have heard the views of some hon. Members on that today—some Governments are already trying to rein back from their green policies for fear of their impact on their national economies. The chance of reaching an international agreement is therefore receding rather than improving. The idea of being able to reach such an agreement before the Copenhagen conference is pie in the sky.
	I definitely got the impression from the Minister that there had not been a great deal of progress on this matter, yet I note that the section of the Library research paper on calculating emissions states:
	"Under the Kyoto Protocol, the United Kingdom has a legally binding obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 per cent. below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Aviation is split into domestic and international for the purpose of calculating emission levels and for Kyoto. International carbon dioxide emissions from aviation do not come under the Kyoto agreement and so are not calculated in the UK's emission...totals for this purpose".
	It goes on to say that the Department for Transport
	"states that this is because 'there is no international agreement yet on ways of allocating such emissions'".
	That point was made by the Minister. It goes on:
	"Despite this, under Kyoto, signatory nations do report estimates of international aviation bunker fuel emissions as a 'memo item' in their national greenhouse gas inventories."
	That point is also made by Friends of the Earth. So these emissions are calculated, and I believe that that gives the United Kingdom a basis for moving forward.

Sammy Wilson: If one looks at the second IPCC report, one can see that Sir John Houghton suggested that he had excluded the views of some of those scientists because they did not fit in with the general view. There is a wide range of views among scientists who were engaged on the panel, and those views were deliberately excluded.

Gregory Barker: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a definitive answer on what the cap should be in 2012, but his general point is correct. We do not see CCS as an alternative to the ETS, but as a complementary policy. The whole point of an emissions trading scheme is that it drives technological change. I am sorry that Ministers do not accept the verdict of Lord Stern—in a report commissioned by the Government—that
	"Carbon pricing alone will not be sufficient to reduce emissions on the scale and pace needed".
	Perhaps the Minister can say now whether she refutes those words. If not, I hope that she will join us in supporting an emissions performance standard that is the most market friendly approach to driving CCS.

Colin Challen: I, too, welcome this Bill. It is a major step forward, and certainly a world first, so it is a great privilege to take part in this debate this evening. I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, and I also want to say a few words about new clause 11.
	New clause 10 deals with what lies at the heart of a great part of our carbon emissions, 40 per cent. of which come from the building stock in this country. It provides an answer to those sceptics who talk about cost only as a burden and not as an opportunity or an investment. We have heard some of that talk this afternoon but, if we invest in homes to make them more energy efficient, people will save money and we will not have to subsidise them so much in future through the various schemes that exist. That would be an immediate gain for people today, and not just for future generations.
	New clause 10 addresses three targets, and I think that I can claim correctly that all of them are existing Government policy, except that they have never been set in statute. The first target is that the general level of energy efficiency in residential accommodation should be increased by at least 20 per cent. by 2020, compared with the general level of such energy efficiency in 2010.
	The 2003 energy White Paper identified that a carbon saving of 6 million tonnes from residential energy efficiency is achievable between 2010 and 2020. An answer to a parliamentary question appeared in  Hansard on 10 March 2003, at column 11W, which identified that that saving would correspond to an energy efficiency improvement of between 18 and 22 per cent. New clause 10 therefore sets a target in the mid-range of that projection, and the Government answer makes it clear that the target is achievable and doable.
	The second target is that the general level of energy usage in the commercial and public services sector should be reduced by at least 10 per cent. by the end of 2010 compared with the general level of usage in 2005, and reduced again by at least 10 per cent. at the end of 2020 compared with the general level in 2010. Again, a parliamentary answer appeared in  Hansard on 19 October 2005, at column 1054W, that identified that a potential reduction of 10 per cent. in energy usage in that sector was achievable by 2010. Another parliamentary question received an answer on 30 November 2005 that stated that the cost-effective potential of energy savings would be around a further 10 per cent. from 2010 to 2020. My point is that the Government have already said that the targets set out in new clause 10 are achievable.
	The final target in new clause 10 is to ensure, as soon as is practically possible, that
	"the number of dwellings with one or more microgeneration installations shall be eight times the number of dwellings with one or more microgeneration installations in 2007."
	That is not a vast increase in numerical terms, as so few dwellings have such installations at the moment, but the Prime Minister told the Green Alliance in a speech on 12 March 2007 that
	"we will provide new incentives with the aim of raising eightfold the number of households which are producers as well as consumers of energy."
	It is therefore clear that all the proposals in new clause 10 are existing Government policy. The Government have assessed the situation and said that all the targets are achievable.

Martin Horwood: The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. The Peterhead project was a classic example of the Government sending precisely the wrong signals. Although the Minister seemed to disagree with this earlier, it is clear from talking to BP that the Peterhead project was stopped as a direct result of the announcements relating to the Government's own competition. That meant that the opportunity to use some of those gasfields for carbon storage is lost for ever, because once capped, the gasfields are almost impossible to exploit. It was a terrible decision, and it meant that projects such as the one at Peterhead, which would probably have been on line and functioning by about 2011, were stopped and replaced by a competition that was unlikely to produce anything before 2014 at the earliest. The Government have produced a carbon capture strategy that is too narrowly focused on post-combustion technology, too miserly and too unambitious in its scale. That is a great shame.
	If the decisions relating to Kingsnorth are anything to go by, it is clear that the current framework of the emissions trading scheme is, almost by definition, insufficient to drive us towards a low carbon economy. The fact that Kingsnorth is to go ahead when its carbon emissions will be 70 per cent. higher than the nearest commercial equivalent is almost proof of the inadequacy of the ETS. The Minister seemed to suggest that we should not talk about technologies that had to be retro-fitted more expensively to old power stations, while ignoring the fact that if Kingsnorth is allowed to go ahead without locking in carbon capture and storage in some form, even if it is only in financial form rather than in technical form to start with, carbon capture and storage will have to be retro-fitted to an old coal-fired power station. That is what Kingsnorth will be—a dinosaur from a bygone age—by the time carbon capture and storage is ready.
	Perhaps all this is a legacy of the Secretary of State's predecessor in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in its previous incarnation. The hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) as the Energy Minister was an amiable Minister to have on board in these debates, but he did not give much away and DBERR was clearly pointing in the wrong direction on such issues. Now that the new Secretary of State has responsibility for energy policy as well, I would urge him to add carbon capture and storage to the long list of welcome modifications—we would not dare to call them U-turns—that he is adding to Government policy.
	To say that the Conservative party had a slightly mixed record on some of these issues might be a little churlish in the circumstances, although I would point out to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) the failure of his colleagues consistently to support the Californian model that was put forward in an amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats to the Energy Bill in the summer. He probably ought to look carefully at the voting record of the Conservative group on Kent county council on the subject of Kingsnorth, as well.
	However, the hon. Gentleman made clear his position today, and we welcome him on the increasingly crowded road to Damascus. He said that the Conservatives would put the greenhouse gas limit at Kingsnorth at 500 g per kilowatt-hour. If that is the case, he was wise not to specify the exact limit in the new clause. We would have had some difficulty supporting it at such a high level. Our preference is for a lower limit—to judge from the nods from some on the Government Benches, I suspect that others might agree with me—of about 350 g per kilowatt-hour, which would direct investors towards alternative gas-fired power stations if no unabated coal-fired power stations were viable.

Martin Horwood: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments in that respect. As he said, the new clause gives the Secretary of State the power to define the limits— [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says from a sedentary position that he has that power anyway. In that case, he should support the new clause and welcome it into the Bill. There should be no dispute across the Chamber. We should make sure that we are giving the clearest possible signals to the industry and to private investors that this is the direction of travel, and that if anyone wanted to invest in a coal-fired power station, they should factor in the cost of carbon capture and carbon storage into the future, or they would be misreading the investment opportunity.
	I am afraid that that is not the signal being given to the energy industry. The signal that the Government are giving at present is that the industry can get away with it, and that, as the Minister described, by going ahead with very high emissions in some sectors and allowing ourselves headroom within the European emissions trading scheme, we will effectively buy our way out of a high-carbon economy.

Gregory Barker: The hon. Gentleman is talking a great deal of sense and there is a lot of shared thought across the Chamber about the importance of investment in green technology and energy efficiency as a response to the current economic crisis as well as for the long-term good of the economy. Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to consider what the Germans are doing? He said that the 2 per cent. target was unambitious, and I mentioned earlier that the Germans are looking at 3 per cent. a year for the next 10 years. Has the German plan influenced his thinking at all?

Gregory Barker: The hon. Gentleman's party's Government has shot our fox on sharing the proceeds of growth; it is very unlikely that there will be any growth for the foreseeable future. In the light of that, we have had to amend our policy. However, if the hon. Gentleman had paid attention to what the Leader of the Opposition has said, he would know that my right hon. Friend has clearly spelt out that we anticipate significant funding for carbon capture and storage from the auctioning of emissions trading scheme credits in 2012 and that we have also spelt out where the savings would come for the funding of feed-in tariffs. The hon. Gentleman would also know of our clear commitment on the expansion of Heathrow. On all those issues, his party's Government are vague and our party is absolutely clear.

Graham Stuart: I stand corrected, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was searching for a form of words that my constituents down the Dog and Duck would think adequately expressed the Government's behaviour, but I suppose it would be best to say that they say one thing and do another.
	I fear that this Bill is like a conjuring trick that people follow with their eyes. So many people, from Friends of the Earth to many others who genuinely care about this issue, have bought into the idea that the Government are going to take action on it and set down in law the 2050 target, but we need to look at what the Government have actually done. The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) referred to energy efficiency. That is an area where it is cost-beneficial to the economy to deliver energy efficiency because it serves the purpose of benefiting social justice, but where we have lagged—pardon the pun—behind our neighbours.
	Earlier this year, the Sustainable Development Commission, which has the job of monitoring Government, reported to the Environmental Audit Committee that nearly two thirds of central Government Departments are still not on track to meet the target of reducing carbon emissions from their own centrally held offices by 12.5 per cent. by 2010. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was more than halfway down the list. The central Government agency that previously led on climate change has failed to deliver these changes in its own offices in buildings that we can see from here. Yet we are supposed to believe that this Government, who have so signally failed to turn rhetoric into action, can be trusted to deliver on some long-term target about 2050. I am afraid that I have little confidence that they will do so. Policies are not co-ordinated between the different Departments. Instead of leading by example, they push for environmentally unfriendly policies such as new and unabated coal-powered plants or the expansion of Heathrow airport. As the Environmental Audit Committee has noted, the Government will miss their own target of cutting national carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010.
	That is the backdrop to the Bill. None the less, I welcome the Government's late conversion to feed-in tariffs, for which the Conservatives have been pushing for some time. That will be welcome, albeit belated, if it helps to lead to change on the front line and we can copy some of the success of our north European neighbours.
	I support new clause 10, which was well argued for by the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell, as it would give statutory backing to targets that are already supposed to be Government targets but which Front Benchers seem unprepared to accept despite the impassioned pleas of Members on the Benches behind them.
	I also support new clause 11. That is accompanied by a statement of Conservative party policy by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker)—the belief that we should not be allowing the creation and building of any more dirty coal power plants. Looking ahead, there is a real risk of an energy shortfall from 2017 onwards— [ Interruption . ] The Secretary of State is suggesting that that is not the case. If he looks on the national grid website, he will see that it itemises that potential shortfall. Moreover, there are imponderables as to how long existing power plants can be sustained for and what is their efficiency and effectiveness in producing energy. The Government's inaction has put us in a position whereby we have failed not only to deliver energy efficiency, which would reduce demand, but to put in place the production capacity to ensure that we can be well served by it.
	The Conservatives, on the other hand, have said clearly that we would not allow any more dirty coal power plants to be built. When one looks at this country's historical skills and strengths—the presence of major oil companies, our history of offshore platforms and involvement in coal mining—in what better way could we give a genuine lead to world efforts to reduce emissions than by leading on carbon capture and storage? The Minister completely failed to convince anyone that new dirty coal power stations would be more likely to be retro-fitted with CCS than existing power stations. If the Government were serious about this, instead of saying one thing and doing another, they would back CCS and ensure that it was delivered.
	It is not only north European countries that have done a better job than we have. The latest Chinese five-year plan for 2005-2010 looks for a 20 per cent. reduction in energy usage per unit of gross domestic product. In a developing country with hundreds of millions of people still living in poverty, the Chinese have a greater ambition than this Government, who claim to lead.

Alan Simpson: It took me quite a long time to decide to add my name to new clause 11. My reservations about it were exactly the opposite of those expressed by the Minister. I do not think for one moment that it would prevent the development of any sort of new power station working to any sort of standards. My reservations centre on the fact that the new clause is based around the word "may", not "shall". We can argue about what different parties may do if they are in government, but as there is no "shall" there is no obligation to act.
	I looked at the Bill, and I found that a couple of voices were permanently ringing in my ears. One was the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), who has legitimately challenged this House to say at what point the 80 per cent. target becomes reality politics as opposed to fantasy politics. It is not enough to set a 2050 target if we have no idea of how we are going to achieve it. The second voice that permanently nags me is that of Aneurin Bevan, who, a long time ago, said that there is no point in willing the ends if we are not prepared to will the means. In our context, the means have to be measurable intervention measures that set minimum performance standards, and perhaps minimum requirements, about carbon reductions.
	I have awkward feelings about the introduction of thresholds in the Bill. If we want to amend those thresholds, we will need to come back with primary legislation. If there is a case for thresholds, they should be minimum thresholds that would allow us to set standards that have to be met, but perhaps exceeded. There is nothing in the new clause that does that, and there is not even a duty to require those regulations to be brought in. Those were my misgivings, but running through the Bill is a recognition that, as various hon. Members have said, we have to be willing to define the route map to take us from where we are to where we want to be in 2020 and 2050.
	Having said that, there has been a degree of ungenerosity from the Opposition in their criticism of the Government's lack of imagination. I am pleased that we have this new Secretary of State, and I am really pleased that he was able to come to this House and announce that we were raising the 2050 target from 60 per cent. to 80 per cent. I was also pleased that he made a point about feed-in tariffs and the genuine scope for community-based energy generation. It is quite wrong to pretend that the sense of vision and leadership in his statements did not reflect a Secretary of State who could be quite transformational in delivering the 2020 and 2050 targets—I hope that does not damn him for all time.
	The circumstances in which the Bill has to be taken forward provide the Secretary of State with ammunition, which, three to six months ago, we may not have anticipated needing. The collapse of global financial systems has prompted leaders in our country and internationally about the need for public investment to deliver economic stability. Where will we find that? The answer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said, is probably to be found in a green new deal. That is the lesson to be learned from what has been done in Germany since 2001, and probably since 1990.
	I have done quite a lot of work on the way in which Germany has introduced its feed-in tariffs and the transformational effect that that has had. The one benchmark comparison I offer is that the Government have set 2016 as the staging point at which we will insist that all new houses are to be zero carbon, and by which we will be building eco-towns. But by 2016, Germany will have converted between 40 and 60 of its existing cities into eco-cities because it has taken a visionary approach to the scope for feed-in tariff legislation. We can anticipate that the Secretary of State will take an equally visionary approach to the same provisions when they come back before the House in another Bill.

David Chaytor: Would my hon. Friend accept that we have an opportunity to revisit the 2016 zero carbon target and bring it forward? That target was set when our ambition was to build 3 million homes by 2020—a quarter of a million homes, or more, a year—and given the state of the housing market and the housing industry, those homes will not be built in the next two, three or four years unless the Government intervenes. Could the Government not intervene to boost the building of new homes, and bring forward the target date for new homes so that the energy efficiency is built in at an earlier stage?

Edward Miliband: I would say to the right hon. Gentleman, who is much more experienced in this House than I am, that it was up to Members to ensure that we got through the business. Members spoke at great length; he made a contribution as well. The House has clearly spoken on this issue. With five Members and the overwhelming majority of Members voting as they did, the mood and sentiment of the House is pretty clear.
	Let me pay tribute to most Members across the House for their work on the Bill, including Opposition Front Benchers for their support, encouragement and mainly constructive ideas, and to all those who scrutinised the Bill in draft form.
	There are three important things about the Bill, the first of which is its ambition, to which the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) referred. It will make us the first country in the world to enshrine in law binding climate change targets that are stretching and ambitious, as they need to be—80 per cent. by 2050. They provide a scale of ambition that will enable us to play our part, with authority, in seeking a global agreement in Copenhagen at the end of next year. As Friends of the Earth has said,
	"the world's first climate change law will also be a world class climate change law".
	The second reason why the Bill is unique is the central role played by the independent Committee on Climate Change, which ensures that Britain's long-term framework will continue to be guided by the evidence, whatever the short-term pressures facing politicians of the day. We see that in its advice on the 80 per cent. target, as we no doubt will in its advice on carbon budgets, which will be published on 1 December. At a time when we face economic difficulties, it is important that we in this House not only continue to be ambitious about climate change but are guided by the science, and the Committee on Climate Change will ensure that that happens.
	The third reason why the Bill is a landmark is its recognition—some Members do not like this—of the scale of the shift that will be required to meet our ambitions. That requires action from every section of our society. For our whole economy, the advent of carbon budgets will help to drive the necessary transition in the way that we use resources. For the energy sector, the obligations on companies to meet carbon-reduction targets for households will help the shift towards energy saving. For business as a whole, the measures on corporate reporting recognise, as do many British businesses, that cutting carbon emissions is now a necessary part of doing business. For the public sector, we need to do better, and the proposals on reporting on energy efficiency and being part of a new carbon-reduction commitment represent a recognition of that.
	It is very welcome that these key features of the Bill—the ambitions, the mechanisms and the need for a shift in all parts of society—have commanded near-universal consensus in this House. As I said in my statement earlier this month—I think that we should freely acknowledge this—we know that the hard work to achieve our climate change objectives has, in a way, only just begun. We should be pleased about what we have achieved: a 16 per cent. cut in emissions since 1990 that means that we are one of only a few countries to be on track to meet our Kyoto targets; an increase in offshore wind that means that we have now overtaken Denmark; and a tripling of renewable energy in the past five years.
	However, we know that there is a lot more to do. That is why I announced the feed-in tariff last week, why we need to tackle renewable energy being connected to the grid, why we need investment in carbon capture and storage, and why we need diversity in our energy sources. We are determined to make progress not just through this Bill, but during this year, next year and into the next Parliament. We look forward to many years of support from the Opposition as we do so.
	I end by paying tribute not to those in the House, but to those outside it: those who saw the dangers of climate change and the actions that needed to be taken long before the politicians did. I pay tribute to the scientists who detected the problem, the campaigners who fought to bring it to public attention, the green movement that mobilised for change, and above all, the members of the public who wrote to us in record numbers, asking for a Bill that met the scale of the challenge. I believe that we have met that challenge. We owe them a debt of gratitude for making it happen, and I urge all Members to support the Third Reading.

Greg Clark: I regret that there is little time to thank individually all the people who have contributed to the Bill during its passage, both inside the House and out of it. I would like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), who first pressed for the Bill to be taken up by the Government, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who previously stood in my place. One of the things that he bequeathed to me was the expertise and enthusiasm of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), my parliamentary neighbour.
	This Bill has attracted an unusual spirit of cross-party co-operation in both Houses. That is appropriate, because to succeed the Bill must lay foundations that endure from one Parliament to the other and indeed, eventually, from one generation to another. By 2050, we will all be gone from this House—some sooner than others—but those who come after us will remember our names because it is this generation that will be judged on what we did in response to the challenge of climate change. That point was well made by Margaret Thatcher. Speaking of our duty to nature, she said:
	"That duty is constant...It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children and theirs."
	As robustly as we support the Bill, I know that a few people in this House and in the country have concerns about it. Since we have not had much time to debate them tonight, let me make some mention of them. Some are suspicious that a purported scientific consensus reflects more group think than rigour. Others worry that the costs of action to our businesses and our economy may be too great. Others fear that the Bill indicates a unilateral, rather than a multilateral approach. Let me take those points briefly in turn. Churchill says that scientists should be on top— [L aughter. ] Scientists should be on tap, not on top. I agree with that, the way he said it—correctly. That is why advice to Ministers should be given in public through the Committee, not behind closed doors, and it should be subject to the scrutiny and ultimate approval of this House.
	On the question of affordability, the Bill provides the Secretary of State not just with the opportunity, but the obligation to set carbon budgets in the light of the science and the crucial economic and business issues of the day. In any case, what is affordable? Is it clinging to a high-carbon economy and everything that that implies for our energy security, price volatility and the costs of doing business, or is it switching to secure, stable and efficient energy systems that put British business, particularly British process industries, which have long been world-beating, into the forefront of world innovation?
	I am a multilateralist. I do not believe that Britain should act alone, but this Bill provides for the Secretary of State to give leadership in our international negotiations and, at all times, to have the flexibility to ensure that other countries come with us. That is the crucial approach to our climate change policy. We cannot stand alone; we have to take the rest of the world with us.
	During the past 10 years, the Government have often operated without a long-term energy policy; they have dithered and delayed over nuclear power, and emissions have risen in the most recent years. We are not even certain we can keep the lights on for the next 15 years. If we have learned anything from that experience, it is that we need serious long-term policies, not the short-termism of the past 10 years. This Bill helps to secure that.

John Gummer: The crucial aspect of the Bill is that it sets up a Committee that has a genuine effect on not only the Government but the Opposition. It will no longer be possible for anyone to give a short-term answer to climate change issues. We should all recognise that, if we dislike what the Government propose, we must have an alternative, which will deliver the same end. We have never previously had that in British politics because we have not been in a situation that binds our successors. The technique of creating the independent committee is crucial to the good governance of Britain in circumstances in which the traditional mechanisms do not fit the time scale of climate change. The Bill is therefore crucial and utterly different. I believe that the vote tonight will show that our system is capable of adapting even to the biggest threat to mankind that we have faced, in a knowledgeable sense, at any time. I therefore believe that we should be proud to be present and voting.
	 Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—
	 The House proceeded to a Division.

Chris Bryant: I beg to move,
	That the following amendments be made in respect of Standing Orders:
	A SELECT COMMITTEES RELATED TO GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS
	That Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments) be amended in the Table in paragraph (2) by inserting, in the appropriate place, the following item:
	
		
			 Energy and Climate Change Department of Energy and Climate Change 14 
		
	
	B LIAISON COMMITTEE
	That the Resolution of the House of 13th July 2005 relating to Liaison Committee (Membership) be further amended in paragraph (2) by inserting, in the appropriate place, 'Energy and Climate Change'.
	C EUROPEAN COMMITTEES
	That Standing Order No. 119 be amended by inserting in the Table in paragraph (6), in respect of European Committee A, in the appropriate place, 'Energy and Climate Change'.
	Departmental Select Committees are a well-respected, integral and vital part of the House's scrutiny of Government. Following the 1978 report of the Procedure Committee and their creation in 1979, they took over the role formerly performed, in a rather haphazard way, by the specially appointed investigatory committees of the House and the several topic-based committees that were set up in the 1960s under Richard Crossman as Leader of the House. The creation of departmental Select Committees is one innovation—or, dare I say, modernisation—that everyone has hailed as a resounding success. It has been the convention that each Government Department have a Select Committee to scrutinise its policies, its expenditure and its work. Consequently, whenever a new Department of Government has been created, there has been a consequential change in Select Committees.
	As Members will know, on 3 October, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister created a new Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Government have wanted to move as swiftly as possible to ensure the proper scrutiny of the new Department. Its role, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explained to the House on 16 October, is to ensure that we have energy that is affordable, secure and sustainable, to bring about the transition to a low-carbon Britain and to achieve an international agreement on climate change at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen at the end of next year. Members in all parts of the House welcomed the creation of the new Department, and I hope that they will welcome the Government's swift action to establish the new Committee.
	Part A of the motion creates a new departmental Select Committee to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It will have exactly the same role and powers as other departmental Select Committees. The Government have proposed a membership of 14, but the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo)—who is present—supported by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), has tabled amendment (a), which proposes the reduction of the membership from 14 to 11. I look forward to hearing their arguments during the debate.

Chris Bryant: I am not particularly aware that many representations have been made to the Leader of the Housel, although I have received quite a few representations myself this evening in the Chamber from Members throughout the House, and I suspect that I am about to receive another in a moment. I am happy to listen to the debate and see where we go from there.

Chris Bryant: It depends what the hon. Gentleman means by a minority party. Obviously, the Liberal Democrats are normally included in the concept of a minority party, and I understand that it is normally up to the Committee of Selection to decide precisely who ends up on a committee. In the case of the hon. Gentleman's party, that would depend on what was advanced by the Liberal Democrats. But, as I said to the right hon. Member for Fylde, I am more than happy to listen to the debate and see where we go from there.

Chris Bryant: I shall have to come back to the hon. Gentleman on that. It is my understanding that the number is usually six, but if I have to correct that statement later after having been more suitably informed, I reserve the right to do so. In the end, it is for the Committee of Selection to decide.
	Part B provides that the Chairman of the new Committee shall be a member of the Liaison Committee. Part C provides for European Union documents falling within the Department's responsibility to be referred by the European Scrutiny Committee to a European General Committee for debate.
	All departmental Select Committees operate under the same system. There are, however, two Committees of the House that have rather different functions: the Public Accounts Committee, which dates back to 1861 and is the oldest of the House's Committees, and the Environmental Audit Committee, which, as I have said, was established as a result of a Labour manifesto commitment in 1997. That Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), has taken the lead in examining climate change issues across Government and has covered wider topics, for instance through its highly respected annual analysis of the environmental implications of the pre-Budget report and its work on sustainable development. I pay tribute to its members, many of whom have, both personally and from within the Committee, led the debate on these issues, as we have witnessed today in the Chamber.
	Clearly, there is the potential for overlap between the Environmental Audit Committee and the new Committee that we hope to set up tonight, but that is nothing new. Both departmental and non-departmental Select Committees have always adopted a flexible approach to their terms of reference, which is a good thing as it allows for joined-up scrutiny free from the sometimes artificial boundaries of departmental responsibilities. Moreover, the Environmental Audit Committee is very much akin to the Public Accounts Committee, whose cross-departmental remit has not been obviated by the existence of the Treasury Committee. We are reluctant to abolish the Environmental Audit Committee, as we believe it still performs an effective and important role in monitoring environmental issues at a cross-departmental level. We would, therefore, like to wait and see how the two Committees work together before taking any long-term decisions about the future of the Environmental Audit Committee.

Chris Bryant: The right hon. Gentleman has pre-empted exactly what I was about to say. Clearly, there are other Committees that have historically had an interest in the matter, but that is true in many cases. For instance, in the case of the Communications Act 2003, there were two Select Committees that had a prime interest, the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport and the then Select Committee on Trade and Industry. There is constant interest in the House ensuring that when there are overlapping interests, Committees work together rather than against one another.

Chris Bryant: The right hon. Gentleman nods sagely, so I think that he was merely trying to set me a trap, into which I have no intention of walking.
	I should also mention the work of the Business and Enterprise Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). I know that he will be sorry to lose his energy brief, as the Committee has recently done valuable work on energy prices and on fuel poverty, matters that are often raised in the House. However, business and enterprise remains a wide-ranging brief, and given the breadth of issues that the Committee has tackled in recent years, I know that it will continue to perform an invaluable service to the House. He has tabled amendment (b), which would delay the creation of the new Committee until January. If he feels that that is necessary to allow his Committee to complete work in process and to effect an orderly transition, I am happy to listen to his arguments, should he catch your eye, Mr. Speaker.
	Climate change has also been of interest to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, chaired by the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). I am sorry that it has had to abandon its inquiry into international climate change policy post-2012, not least because I know that he has a long-standing interest in such issues, for which many Members have looked to him. I have no doubt that the Committee's written evidence, which it has placed in the Library, will be of interest to the Energy and Climate Change Committee when it comes into being.
	The motion contains only the changes to Standing Orders that are necessary to bring the Department of Energy and Climate Change fully within the scope of the House's scrutiny arrangements. I therefore commend it to the House.

Simon Hughes: It is intriguing to come to this debate from outside, where it is snowing, which signifies that something is happening to the climate. Some of us believe that it is right to respond to that legislatively—indeed, most of us agreed to do so just a few minutes ago. I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for the way in which he introduced the debate, which is about the logical proposition that we should set up the appropriate Select Committee.
	My Liberal colleagues and I have always said that debates such as this should take place one step earlier, before a new Department is set up, so that this place can scrutinise whether it should happen. That picks up the point made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). It is a Government tradition that the Prime Minister can decide, either after long thought or little thought, to create a new Department. Departments come and go and their names change, but the reality is that they may not be justified. We have argued for a long time that, if a Government, either at the beginning of their term or at some other stage, wish to set up a new Department, it would be far better if the case for such a proposal had to be made and if this House could scrutinise whether it was made well. It is possible that, on examination, such a proposal would be found not to work well. There is a debate to be had—we have not had it today—as to how the new Department, headed by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whom we welcome to his post, will work with existing Departments. One of those Departments has "environment" in its title and will continue to have environmental responsibilities, as will others.

Peter Luff: First, I wish to recognise the courtesy that the Secretary of State is extending by attending this debate. It is greatly appreciated by all of us, and it is characteristic of him, if I may say so. His shadow is also in his place.
	Those of us who have the privilege of being Select Committee Chairmen attach great importance to effective scrutiny of Departments. It would be helpful if the Executive tended to consult rather more with the Chairmen about how that scrutiny should be conducted, instead of presenting the House with a fait accompli. I certainly made suggestions to the Leader's office about the structure of the Select Committees after the creation of the new Department. The Government are, of course, at liberty to disagree with me—I have no monopoly on wisdom—but it would have been good to find out that they disagreed with me, instead of having to rely on a motion appearing on the Order Paper.
	The lack of consultation is disappointing. I approach this debate in a spirit of co-operation because I wish to achieve effective scrutiny, and I was disappointed that, having spoken to the Leader's office, I received no communication that the Government took a contrary view. It is also for the House to determine how it should scrutinise the Executive, not for the Executive to determine how it should be scrutinised. The motion therefore raises important issues of principle, but as I wish this to be a good-natured debate I shall put that to one side. It is just a shame that the approaches that I made to the Leader's officer were not dealt with effectively.
	I also wish to put on the record my support for the new Department. Energy policy is one of the most important issues this nation faces, and the objectives of the Department are some of the most important objectives with which any Secretary of State has to contend. It is true that I personally regret the loss of energy from the responsibilities of my Select Committee—I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for his comments—because I find energy policy fascinating intellectually and politically, and it is of great importance. However, it is right that we should have a separate Department for energy in the testing times that we face, especially in the context of climate change and worries about global warming.
	I have concerns about how the Government have approached the setting up of the new Committee, and the lack of discussion with the Chairmen of the existing Committees, but I agree—with some reluctance—about the need for a new Department. It follows that we need a new Select Committee. This is a discussion of mechanisms, not principles.
	On a question of principle, may I repeat what I said in an intervention in the speech by the Deputy Leader of the House about how much I value the contribution made by the Scottish Nationalist member of my Committee, the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir)? He is an outstanding member of the Committee: he is diligent, hard-working, thoughtful and conciliatory, as well as bringing a great deal of knowledge to bear on the subjects discussed. I appreciate his contribution greatly. I see no reason why, with good will on both sides of the House, Committees of 11 could not accommodate the nationalists' aspirations to be properly represented on Committees of concern to them. The idea that we need a Committee of 14 to meet those aspirations is misguided and misplaced. I greatly value the contribution that the nationalists make to my Committee and I wish to maintain that—certainly on the Business and Enterprise Committee.

Peter Luff: These matters are never simple, and the nature of the negotiations through the usual channels—of which I was once a part, when I was in my party's Whips Office—are often complex. I do not believe that it is necessary to impose the penalty of a Committee of 14 to achieve the desirable objective of ensuring that all parties in this House have a proper say on Select Committees.
	The proposition that I put to the Leader of the House's office was that the Environmental Audit Committee, chaired so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), should be replaced by the Energy and Climate Change Committee. I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley) about the manifesto commitment in respect of a cross-cutting Environmental Audit Committee. The work done by that Committee is overwhelmingly in the climate change and energy area, and it will create a difficulty for all of us who will have a residual responsibility. My Committee cannot ignore the issues relating to the security of energy supply, which are of huge importance for the competitiveness of UK business. We will not ignore them.
	I am sure that there will still be many issues relating to climate change and energy policy that are of concern to my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) as the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. Certainly, if the Environmental Audit Committee survives, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk will have many issues relating to energy policy and climate change to consider. I fear that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change could become the most scrutinised Secretary of State in the House of Commons, and he could be appearing before Select Committees on an alarmingly regular basis. The Government have not thought through the consequences of the change properly.
	There is already a degree of awkward overlap between my Committee and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk—I say this to him in the spirit of friendliness. Certainly, one or two of my hon. Friend's inquiries have caused a degree of confusion in the outside world, in particular an early one on "Keeping the lights on: Nuclear, Renewables and Climate Change", which was published in the 2005-06 Session. Overlap already exists, but this change will make the overlap even greater and more confusing for the outside world. My preference would have been for the Environmental Audit Committee to have been superseded by the Energy and Climate Change Committee, but we are where we are.
	I shall come last to the substance of my amendment, but I shall now speak in support of an amendment that has not yet been moved. I hope that is in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On the thorny question of 11 members as against 14, I had the privilege of chairing what was then the Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—which before that was the Select Committee on Trade and Industry—when it had 14 members. That is not a manageable number. It does not permit effective collegiate working of the Committee. It is too many.
	I want to issue a public apology to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright). Last week we had the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Lord Mandelson, before us. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth had questions that he wanted to ask, but even with only 10 of the 11 members of my Committee present, it was not possible to include him within the timing. I plead guilty to perhaps some mismanagement of the time, but in a Committee of 11 it is a challenge to allow all those people to have a valuable role to play in the work of the Committee. A Committee of 14 is just too big.
	To be honest, I would prefer to see Select Committees made up of nine members. They would have a proper collegiateness and a sense of shared responsibility. The problems of maintaining a quorum—which, if we are honest, we must acknowledge often concern Select Committee Chairmen—would be much less with smaller Select Committees whose members felt that they owned the Committee much more effectively. I have seen no case for a Committee of 14. A Committee of that size was a real problem to me as Chairman, in ensuring the full engagement of members of the Committee. That matters a great deal.
	There is also the problem, which has been mentioned, with the increasing number of Committees. The House is casually adding yet another Committee to its total number of Committees. That has implications for two different parts of the House's work. First, Members are all under huge pressure and are often required to be in three places at the same time, sometimes four: we have Select Committees, General Committees, Westminster Hall, the Chamber of the House, meetings with constituents, and who knows what else. There are not enough Members in the House to put on the increasing number of Select Committees.
	We will have that debate at greater length when the subject of the regional Select Committees comes before the House, perhaps in a couple of weeks' time. I believe that the Government are fundamentally misguided in believing that those Committees can work effectively. We do not have the time, as Members, to do that work, unless we reduce the size of existing Committees. I believe that that is a real problem.
	There is also a problem for the resources of the House. Every time a new Select Committee is established, it means more public expenditure: more Clerks and more people to ensure that the Committees can work effectively. Huge expense is involved in the motion before the House, but it could easily have been avoided had we decided simply to replace the Environmental Audit Committee with the Energy and Climate Change Committee.
	I move now to the substance of my own amendment—the question of timing. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) for what he said from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, and I agree that there is a need for a Select Committee to cover the Department of Energy and Climate Change. When the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform came before my Committee last week, I urged its rapid establishment, on the assumption that it would replace the Environmental Audit Committee. I was genuinely very surprised and disappointed to discover that that was not the case.
	We all have work programmes. I was very grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for what he said from the Dispatch Box about my Committee's report "Energy prices, fuel poverty and Ofgem", but we had sittings planned to finish it off. Ofgem has published its initial probe and findings, and we had sittings planned with energy Ministers and Ofgem to wrap up the inquiry. It would be nice to be able to do that without fearing that we were treading on the toes of a new Committee.
	I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde has similar issues with his Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk will soon be able to speak for himself. However, given the Government's rather surprising decision—over which I feel slightly bounced—it would be helpful to have a couple of months to finalise our work programmes. That is all that we are asking for, and it will ensure that the new Committee, when it is up and running, can do so without treading too aggressively on the toes of the other Committees.
	We also need time to sort out the staffing behind the scenes of the new Committee. We have a very talented Committee specialist, Rob Cope, who was responsible in large part for writing the report to which I have referred, and I imagine that he will want to go to the Energy and Climate Change Committee. Who else will be provided to support his work with the new Committee? What new Clerks will be discovered? What will be the consequences for the work of existing Committees? Which staff will we lose? It is all a bit rushed, but it need not have been if the Government had simply replaced the Environmental Audit Committee with the new Committee.
	I believe that there is a very strong case for giving us just a couple of months so that we can manage the Committee's existing work programmes and staff in an orderly fashion. I strongly support the principle of what the Government are doing: I have no problem with that, save for my belief that it would be better to replace the existing Committee rather than create an additional one. The principle behind having a new, separate Department is good, and this House must be able to subject it to effective scrutiny. I believe that that would be best served by having a smaller Committee of 11 members that can meet the legitimate needs of the nationalist parties. I think that that arrangement would allow more effective scrutiny by this House of the Committee's work.

Tony Wright: I have no doubt that the new Department will be distinguished, or that the Minister leading it will do so in a distinguished way. The House's Select Committee system has to respond when a new Department is established, and the tradition is that a Department is matched by an appropriate departmental Select Committee, so the logic is clear.
	In some ways, the challenge is for the Select Committee system, which is perhaps the most conservative part of this institution. I speak as one who chairs a Select Committee, and it is natural for us to want to defend our territory. We are not always very imaginative in thinking about how the system might work differently.
	In a sense, the Government can be commended for thinking more thematically and sensibly about producing a departmental change to reflect a changing aspect of Government, but the consequence is that the House must think about how it can match that in an intelligent way. It may not be the most intelligent response simply to set up yet another Select Committee, because, as we have heard, many Committees already operate in those areas. We need a more sensible response to match the new Department, beyond inventing a new Committee simply because there is a new Department—but, as I say, that is a challenge more for the House than for the Government.
	I want to say two other things briefly, although they may be less helpful in terms of what is being proposed. The first takes up a point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), and it reflects an argument—or at least a conversation—that my Committee has been having with the Government for quite some time about how machinery of Government changes should be handled. Indeed, we had my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in his previous incarnation, before us on this matter not so very long ago.
	It seemed very odd to my Committee that when dealing with other public bodies or bits of Government apart from ourselves, we insist on all sorts of consultative processes before substantial reorganisations take place. There is a good reason for that: we want to know the logic behind, and the case for, the reorganisation, and we want to evaluate the costs and benefits. There are always costs, although there may well be benefits, too. We want to do that in a calm measured way, so that the sort of considerations that are being raised now, at the 11th hour, can be raised over a decent period. Of course, we learn things through that process; we learn whether we have got the reorganisation right.
	Until we took an interest in such matters, the Government did not even issue a piece of paper describing such major changes. Now we do get a piece of paper, but nothing more than that. Parliament ought to be involved. Of course the Government will decide on such changes, but Parliament should at least be consulted on major changes to the machinery of government, just as we would expect to be consulted if other bits of the public sector were to be reorganised.
	When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and I had an exchange on the subject, he told me that that would be highly unconstitutional, but I do not think that he really believed that, although he had been advised to say it. I have learned over the years that when things are said to be constitutionally impossible, they may on the very next day turn out to be constitutionally necessary. Parliament has to return to the issue. It would be in the interests of the Government and Parliament to ensure that the process of making large-scale changes to how the Government operate is slightly more reflective.
	When we set up new Committees, as we are doing today, we have to be mindful of what it means for Parliament and the Select Committee system. When my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House opened the debate, he rightly talked about the gains that have resulted from the Select Committee system in its modern form, and the general support for it. All that is true, but it depends for its vitality on the relationship between the House of Commons and the Executive. We have to be able to operate a vital Select Committee system that scrutinises what the Executive do. If the balance between the Executive and the Commons changes materially, the ability to provide that scrutiny effectively is diminished. What I am really saying is that it is easy to set up a new Select Committee system, but less easy to make sure that it becomes part of an effective system of scrutiny, because that requires the institution itself to be effective. I put the case in that way because I have a certain worry.
	The Executive grows; there are now many more Parliamentary Private Secretaries. There is the issue of whether such people can sit on Select Committees. The idea would have been abhorrent at one time, because it confuses the scrutiny role with the executive role, but the problem reflects the fact that we will have some difficulty making the system work unless we compromise in such areas. There is also the new invention of unpaid Ministers—my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House is one of them—and the new invention of assistant Ministers. In many respects, there is now an expanding unofficial Executive. The effect is necessarily to deplete the resources available for the scrutiny work of the House of Commons. We have to be clear about whether that is what we want when we set up a new Committee.
	I am told that new regional Select Committees are to be introduced. With my understanding of how the Select Committee system works, I simply do not know how all that will be possible. The Department of Energy and Climate Change seems to be splendidly conceived and led, but it needs to be matched by scrutiny by the House of Commons. I hope that that will come about not simply through invention, but through imaginative re-ordering; that is the challenge for the Commons. I simply flag up the fact that if we are not careful, the balance between Parliament and the Executive will change in a way that diminishes the ability of the House of Commons to perform the role that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House described when he opened the debate.

Tim Yeo: I rise to speak to amendment (a) in my name, but as there seem to be a larger than usual number of hon. Members in the House at 10.54 pm, I wish to make it clear to any who are not here for the purpose of speaking that I have no intention of pressing my amendment to a vote. I am happy to give that guidance. Members who venture outside will apparently encounter snow, which is proof that we are talking not about global warming, but about climate change.
	I warmly welcome the establishment of the new Department and I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), I am grateful to him for remaining to listen to the debate. The shadow Secretary of State is also in his place.
	I understand the logic of responding to the creation of a new Department by the establishment of a new Select Committee. That preserves the symmetry with which the House scrutinises departmental work, but the pragmatic response might have been, and there were suggestions that this could have been done, with only 19 months to go before a general election, to ask the Environmental Audit Committee to take on the role of scrutinising the new Department.
	However, the Government have decided differently and I wish the new Select Committee well. Once it is up and running, I and my colleagues on the Environmental Audit Committee will, I am sure, co-operate happily with the Chairman and its members when they have been chosen. We have plenty of experience of working with other Committees in our present function, and I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire and my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), with whom I have worked particularly closely in the past three years.
	I shall make three brief points. The first is to emphasise what the Minister said in his remarks and the intervention from my colleague, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley). I was going to call her my hon. Friend, as we seem to work so closely together. Climate change issues are, by their nature, cross-cutting issues. Tackling climate change involves tax policy, transport policy, business policy, energy policy—a range of policies. For that reason, the Environmental Audit Committee, with its cross-departmental role, is especially well placed and equipped to consider climate change issues. I am grateful for the tribute that the Deputy Leader of the House paid to the work that my Committee has done over the years. I am well served by members from all sides on the Committee who have considerable expertise.
	On certain aspects of climate change, it is clearly true that we are better able to exercise a scrutiny function than a Committee that is confined to a single Department. It was a Labour Government commitment that led to the establishment of the EAC in 1997. Its cross-departmental role is enshrined in Standing Order 152A. The logical interpretation of that role at the start of this Parliament, before I became the Chairman, was to focus on climate change and related issues as the main theme for the current Parliament, and that has been reflected in the expertise of the members, the Clerk and the staff of the Committee.
	My second point is that we already have, as a Committee, like any Select Committee, a forward programme of work in hand and already announced, for which the National Audit Office, to which I also pay tribute, has done preparatory work. There is often quite a long lead time—six or nine months or even a year—when the NAO will undertake research at our request, do that study, deliver it to us and publish it before we commence our inquiry. We do not want to be suddenly blown off course in our work because a new Committee has been established.
	We already have an inquiry under way into shipping, which will be followed by one on forestry. We will conduct our annual examination of the pre-Budget report and we are committed to an inquiry next year into emissions trading at a time when, I hope, the United States will have a system coming on to the statute books. We want to revisit the work that we did last year on the EU emissions trading scheme. Those are all inquiries that we intend to press on with and they will involve taking evidence from Treasury Ministers, Transport Ministers and Ministers in the Department for International Development and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as the Secretary of State for the new Department, I hope.
	My third point is a practical concern and reflects the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire, who is right. Haste in setting up the new Committee will not serve its purposes well and will not help the establishment of a co-operative relationship with other Committees. It would be prudent to wait until the start of a new calendar year.
	My own amendment addresses my concern about the size of Select Committees, a point already well covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire. I shall not repeat his arguments, but I should say that it is easier to chair a Committee of 11 rather than 16, which is the number of members that my Committee has; it is also easier for members of smaller Committees to make satisfying contributions. I think that the Committee of Selection will struggle at this stage of the Parliament to find 14 keen Members eager to take on the work of a new Select Committee; it will struggle even to find 11 of them. I have no doubt that the Committee of Selection will put forward 11 names, but how regularly some of those Members will attend remains to be seen.
	Some months ago, I approached the Leader of the House with a request to reduce the size of the Environmental Audit Committee from 16 to 11. My approach was rebuffed, but I shall be happy to revisit the issue if I am given any encouragement to do so. There are 11 very active members of my Committee and several passengers who would be relieved if they were no longer required to carry out the duties of a Select Committee member.
	Let me conclude by simply saying that the Environmental Audit Committee has played a valuable role since its establishment 11 years ago. I believe that it can continue to do so, even with another Committee alongside it that scrutinises the work of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The members of my Committee feel strongly that they would like to continue doing our work. I am confident that if we are given the opportunity, we will work constructively and positively in co-operation with the members of the new Committee, although it would be easier to do so if the Government accepted the two amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire and me.

Peter Luff: It is a bit different for Parliament than for Departments. When a new Department is set up, the civil servants simply transfer across to it. For Parliament, rather different issues are involved in terms of the staffing of Committees. It is much more complex for us, with our smaller and more limited resources, to respond in that flexible way, and much easier for Departments.

Mark Durkan: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. However, that is one of the reasons why I suggested that if we go ahead and set up this Committee, the existing Committees—not only their members but their expert personnel—can continue to do their good work. That might allow time for parliamentary channels to review what the new Committee needs in the way of support personnel as it begins its work. Setting up the new Committee need not necessarily bring to an abrupt end the existing work of other Committees. That can continue into the new year and sensible handovers can than take place. Surely we can be practical and realistic about that.
	This Department has been formed in a new context and is working on several significant challenges right across the policy range—social policy on fuel poverty and economic and enterprise policy in relation to the significance of energy policy to business and to the broader economy. There are also international and diplomatic dimensions to the quest for international standards in respect of environmental regulation and climate change. The new Department has a big task, and it may do no harm to make the Committee a bit bigger rather than a bit smaller. That would allow for a broader spread across the parties and, as suggested by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), for a broader geographic spread. Whether parties are big or small, the issues under discussion present different challenges in different regions. We have to take account not only of the interests of all the various Whitehall Departments but the many and varied Departments at a devolved level, as well as local government interests throughout the UK.
	At this stage of the Parliament, it would perhaps be more appropriate to form a Committee of 14 rather than 11. If people say that that would involve an over-commitment of Members to Committees, then there might be a case for looking at the size of the Committee but not its role. It has been set up with a very distinct purpose that should range across environmental practices and targets in relation to all Government responsibilities and Departments. That needs to be respected and protected in the context of this debate and beyond it.

Angus Robertson: I am delighted to follow the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, who made a very convincing case about the impact of amendment (a), which would reduce the size of this important Committee from 14 to 11. I am pleased that it is unlikely to be pressed to a vote, but for the record it would be helpful to make a number of points that have not been made so far.
	At the outset, I have to say that I have no doubt that in tabling their amendment the hon. Members for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) and for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) did not intend to exclude parties from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but, as I will outline, that would be the direct consequence of automatically reducing the number from 14 to 11, and I shall explain why in a moment.
	The Deputy Leader of the House was right to remind us all of the "integral and vital part"—to use his words—that these Committees play. They oversee expenditure, the work of Departments and, in the case of energy and climate change, matters of supreme importance. The leader of the SDLP raised the point for the first time in this debate that many of the matters considered are devolved. There is shared sovereignty between Administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and the Ministers who hold portfolio responsibilities for this issue are not from UK-wide parties. In the case of the Welsh Assembly Government, colleagues from Plaid Cymru have responsibility for it; in the Scottish Government, colleagues from the SNP have that responsibility; and in Northern Ireland, a number of colleagues have it, not least the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) who has the environmental responsibility in the Northern Ireland Assembly Government. If a Committee is going to look regularly at areas of policy where there is shared sovereignty, would it not make sense to ensure that there was permanent representation on the Committee that could feed that experience into the deliberations?
	I turn now to the issue of guaranteed places. The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire rightly praised the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) to the Committee on which he sits, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that that place is not guaranteed. The minority parties do not have guaranteed places on departmental Select Committees because they have a membership of 11; the formula that is used sometimes may—just may—afford minority party Members or independents a place on those Committees. It is worth reminding the House that there is not a single Member of parties from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland on the Committees for Children, Schools and Families, Communities and Local Government, Defence, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, International Development, Justice, Treasury or Work and Pensions. I wish to see that changed, but that is not a matter for discussion this evening.
	We have a proposal before us, which I hope will not be pressed and which I hope the Government will not accept, that the Committee should have only 11 members. The result would then be down to the good will of the usual channels. No doubt colleagues who are part of the usual channels would work hard to include the views of Members of all parties, but I am sure that they would concede in private, if not in public, that as the arrangements currently stand, there is no guarantee of minority party representation on Committees with a membership of 11. For that reason, I am pleased that we have colleagues from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in high attendance, because we wish colleagues from the UK-wide parties to be aware how strongly we feel about the matter. The House authorities will not find it difficult to find volunteers from our parties to serve on the Committee. Hopefully, the UK-wide parties can do likewise when it sits as a Committee of 14, should the Government's sensible proposal proceed.

David Chaytor: The representatives of the smaller parties have made several valid points and I the support the comments that the Chairmen of the two Select Committees made. I especially want to reiterate the argument presented by the Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee, of which I am a member.
	In his opening remarks, the Deputy Leader of the House recognised the Environmental Audit Committee's contribution to the scrutiny of climate change in recent years. Indeed, in the current Parliament, we have made it the main focus of our activities. It is generally agreed that the overwhelming majority of Select Committee reports about climate change that the House has produced in recent years came from the Environmental Audit Committee. The Committee has not only a track record but a forward programme of inquiries on the theme of climate change. I therefore believe that there is a strong case for deferring the new arrangements and granting some time to assess how the proposal will work.
	The debate has another dimension, which has not yet been mentioned. We have at best an anomaly and at worst a conflict of interest between the role of the Environmental Audit Committee and that of the new Energy and Climate Change Committee. We have so far examined the problem from the perspective of the Environmental Audit Committee's cross-departmental scrutiny role, but I want to examine the problem from a different perspective.
	The new Department will have a new, cross-departmental role, which the Department that has been subsumed did not perform. That is precisely because of the Climate Change Bill, which we passed this evening. The work of the Department of Energy and Climate Change will be cross-departmental in a way that we have not previously experienced. Its impact and reach will affect the Treasury, the Department for Transport, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I therefore believe that there will be an extra complication because the new departmental Select Committee will, if it tracks and scrutinises the work of its Department, take on a cross-departmental role, which will bring it into conflict with the work of the Environmental Audit Committee.

David Chaytor: I am grateful for those comments. The conclusion that I draw from the anomaly is that, while the fact that existing Select Committees have a forward programme of work in place supports the case for making no change till 1 January, we also need to review the terms of reference of all the affected Select Committees. The Deputy Leader of the House said that he wanted to review the arrangements. I hope that he will accept that, before any change is made, we need a thorough review of the terms of reference of each of the Committees that will be affected.

Michael Jack: The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) made excellent and perceptive comments, and touched on some of the central issues of the debate. I am delighted that the Secretary of State for the new Department of Energy and Climate Change is back in his place because the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recommended on several occasions that a Cabinet Minister should have more focus on a portfolio that dealt with climate change. It is so important and, by definition, cuts across Government. Intriguingly, in providing that additional focus, the Government have married with it the other side of the equation—namely, that part of Government activity that deals with the emission of carbon dioxide. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) made a point about his Committee being transmuted into the new Committee. Marrying energy and climate change under one departmental roof means that he could bring with him the critical faculty of a Committee that dealt with emissions and also take on a critical appraisal of issues connected with generating energy. I thought that that was a good way of counterbalancing the sometimes irreconcilable sides of the Secretary of State's new Department, which concern generating energy on the one hand and seeking to reduce CO2 on the other.
	Part A of the motion before the House invites us to amend the resolution of the House of 13 July 2005 dealing with the Liaison Committee. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), in his as always helpful interventions on the process of government, raised the fact that the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House had effectively ridden roughshod over a mechanism of the House designed to deal with the types of issue that we have been discussing.
	We are talking, first, about what the right composition of a Select Committee to shadow the new Department should be. I support that, but my hon. Friends have asked questions about the new Committee's composition by number, its starting date, existing workflows, the cross-cutting nature of its work and the avoidance of conflict when dealing with environmental issues. Would it not have been a good idea if, once the new Department had been formed, the Leader of the House had sought the view of the Liaison Committee, so that it could carry out, as it were, a review of how environmental scrutiny was conducted, so as to resolve any conflict and to present a solution that would have given best effect to the House's wishes to scrutinise the new Department? However, that option has been ignored and the only option is the one before the House this evening.
	As a result, a lot of good work, including the inquiry that my Committee, the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was going to undertake into fuel poverty, will have to be postponed. Our Committee discussed the matter and wrote to the Leader of the House. I am sorry that the Deputy Leader of the House, who appears to be unaware of the debate going on around him, was also unaware of the letter that our Committee wrote in support of the view that the Environmental Audit Committee should take on the responsibility of monitoring the new Department, using its existing expertise, without necessarily creating a brand new Select Committee at this stage in the Parliament, for all the reasons that other right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned.
	It would be nice if the Deputy Leader of the House, in the conciliatory mode in which he introduced the debate, were to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that he had listened to what had been said and that the Government would not press the matter this evening, but would take it to the Liaison Committee for a proper discussion, so that all the issues could be resolved. That way we could move forward in a spirit of harmony and excellence of scrutiny, and on the basis of proper discussion, not the imposition of the solution before the House this evening.

David Gauke: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the schools adjudicator and partially selective schools. Let me begin by giving a little of the background. Approximately 40 secondary state schools in the country admit a proportion of pupils—between 10 and 35 per cent.—on the basis of examination results. There are two in my constituency—St. Clement Danes and Rickmansworth schools—and there are other such schools nearby that also serve pupils from my constituency, in particular Parmiter's, Watford Grammar School for Boys and Watford Grammar School for Girls, all three of which are in the constituency of the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward). There are also two other partially selective schools in the south Hertfordshire area: Queens' in Bushey and Dame Alice Owen's in Potters Bar. All are excellent schools that achieve ratings of "outstanding" from Ofsted and some of the best examination results of any state schools in the country, and all are heavily over-subscribed.
	That brings me to the second element of the debate: the schools adjudicator and its relationship with the school admissions code. The Education and Inspections Act 2006 had some excellent motives and was about giving schools greater freedom and independence, but there was strong opposition from Labour Back Benchers, and in particular from the Labour left. They insisted on a number of concessions, including the creation of a statutory admissions code.
	The original draft code stated that partially selective schools would not be able to give priority in their admissions policy to the siblings of existing pupils. The code argued that such a priority disadvantaged local pupils and that the practice must come to an immediate end. Schools would either have to drop sibling priority or cease to be partially selective.
	The proposal was greeted with outrage by many of the affected families. The prospect of families having to cope with different children at different schools many miles apart, the unfairness of the goalposts being moved—particularly for those families already with children at a partially selective school—and the perceived attack on popular and excellent schools provoked a strong display of opposition.
	I and a number of fellow Conservative Members met the Minister for Schools and Learners to express our concerns. However, this is a cross-party issue. Parliamentary convention prevents the hon. Member for Watford from taking part in this debate, but she expressed her strong opposition to these proposals and had several meetings with Ministers and with parents from her constituency. Given the marginal nature of the Watford constituency, her meeting with Ministers may have been more persuasive than the meeting the Minister for Schools and Learners had with my colleagues and me. As a consequence of that and of other pressures brought to bear, the Government made two concessions by changing the original draft.
	First, the Government brought in transitional rules with the intention of protecting those families already in the system so that the goalposts were not moved for them. Secondly, they did not impose a ban on sibling priority for partially selective schools within the schools admissions code; instead, they empowered the schools adjudicator to prohibit sibling priority unless the school could demonstrate that its admission arrangements as a whole did not exclude families living nearer the school.
	That issue has once again come to light because of an adjudication by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator of 24 September ruling that it was no longer permissible for the Watford grammar schools to include in their admissions criteria "cross-sibling priority". This is a unique circumstance that does not apply to the other partially selective schools. Both Watford grammar schools are single sex schools and until now it has been the policy of both to give priority to the siblings of pupils attending the other school. For example, if a boy in year 9 has a younger sister in year 6, the girl's school would give priority to the girl in year 6. There is much that I could criticise about that adjudication: the lack of opportunity for parents adversely affected to make their case to the schools adjudicator; the inconsistency with other school adjudications; the removal of effective checking of locality claims by the school, which is a separate but important issue; and the lack of importance given to the historic links between the two Watford grammar schools.
	I do not support the dropping of the cross-sibling priority and I understand that that is not the position of the hon. Member for Watford either. However, it is particularly important that the schools adjudication of 24 September will essentially come into effect in the coming school year, beginning in September 2009. That means that in the example that I gave—a boy in year 9 at the boys' grammar school and a girl in year 6—the parents would have believed that the girl would get priority at the girls' school, but that is no longer the case. That is notwithstanding the transitional rules that were included in the Government's concession on the original code.
	On that point, the adjudicator was correct at least according to the letter of the code, if not its spirit. In the transitional provision, it states that the adjudicator must not uphold an objection that would prevent sibling priority for applicants who have siblings on the school roll before the beginning of the 2008 school year. The Watford grammar schools are different schools, so they do not have the same school roll. Consequently, the protection provided in the school admissions code does not apply. However, the Government went further than the mere contents of the code.
	I mentioned a meeting involving the hon. Member for Watford, the Minister for Schools and Learners and parents from the Watford area. The notes from that meeting were produced by the office of the hon. Member for Watford and, I believe, cleared by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. They stated that the Minister for Schools and Learners had said that
	"those parents who have children in partially selective schools before the implementation of the code, i.e. before September 2008, will be protected from the removal of the rule. It would be unfair to effectively 'move the goal posts' for these parents."
	I have spoken to a number of parents who attended that meeting, and they confirm that that is their recollection of what was promised. In other words, a promise was made that would apply not just to parents at Parmiter's or those who would benefit from their children attending the same school, but to those in cross-sibling circumstances. That is not being delivered.
	I have spoken to a number of parents who are deeply upset about that development and I shall give a couple of examples that have been raised with me in the past few days by constituents. On Friday, I met a father of two children, who told me that his family used to live very close to the girls' school—close enough to be sure of place for his daughter on the ground of locality. His eldest child, his son, obtained a place at the boys' school. The family assumed that they had a place at the girls' school assured for their daughter, and in February 2007 they moved a few miles away to Croxley Green, in my constituency. They are very happy in their new home, but had they known then what they know now, they would not have jeopardised their daughter's place at the school by moving.
	Another parent told me that when her son won a place at the boys' school, they chose that school over another, co-educational school at which their daughter would have been guaranteed a place, because they understood that there would later be a place available for their daughter at the girls' school. I was informed of another case only today in which the son is at the boys' school and is feeling terribly guilty that his sisters are no longer in a strong position to obtain a place at the girls' school. This situation involves a great unfairness that goes against what Ministers had previously stated. I know that the hon. Member for Watford recognises the unfairness and is doing what she can to raise the matter. What do the Government say about it?
	The Government say that this is all about the schools adjudicator, who is independent, and that it is nothing to do with them. Parents have been told that Ministers did not expect this judgment, but the message being given is that there is nothing that the Government can do, even though they say that the goalposts should not be moved. People have made decisions about their choice of school or about moving house on the basis of these governmental promises, yet the Government are not prepared to stand by them.
	The schools adjudicator is acting on the basis of a code that was drafted by the Government. Why cannot they amend the code to bring it into line with the stated objective of protecting families already in the system? I am sure that such an approach would have cross-party support. I am sure that it would be supported by Members of Parliament whose constituencies are in the Watford area. It would solve this particular problem, so I urge the Minister to adopt it. She may say that the schools adjudicator is independent, but that has not prevented the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families from writing to, and putting pressure on, the schools adjudicator, insisting on the strict adherence to the school admissions code. I urge the Minister to show some flexibility on this point.
	A wider point relates to the way in which the Government are working in this area. It was clear from the original school admissions code that the Government wished to undermine the ability of partially selective schools to give priority to the siblings of existing pupils. The Government wanted to make those schools more like standard comprehensives and serve a smaller locality, and this was their way of doing it, but they found that the policy was immensely unpopular. In such circumstances, the Government could have stood their ground and argued that they were doing the right thing. Alternatively, they could have conceded the point and stopped trying to interfere in the admissions policies of those schools. Instead the Government found a third way, which involved dealing with the opposition that had built up by providing transitional provisions, albeit ineffectively, and giving the job of banning sibling priority to the supposedly independent schools adjudicator. In that way, the policy objective would be achieved but the Government would be able to distance themselves from it.
	As another schools adjudicator has said, in a separate judgment that interpreted the code,
	"the Government consider that it is generally undesirable for secondary schools which select more than 10 per cent. of their intake by ability or aptitude also to operate sibling criteria".
	I think that that is correct and that it shows what the Government wanted to do. At least the adjudicator in that case argued, again rightly, that the Government's intention was transitional provisions to protect families currently at the school. However, it is clear that the ultimate destination is that partially selective schools will no longer be able to give priority to siblings. As the school admissions code stands, it is clear that the Government's original intention of stopping sibling priority for partially selective schools will be achieved—it is only a matter of time.
	This situation was entirely predictable. I wrote an article in January 2007 stating that the Government's partial climbdown on this issue would prove to be a short-term one. I do not normally quote myself in this House, but I stated that
	"this episode provides an excellent example of how"—
	the Government—
	"hides behind unaccountable bodies which can pursue policies at variance with the views of local people. Nobody should be surprised if, in a couple of years' time, the adjudicator determines that a school may not give priority to siblings. Parents, schools, councillors and MPs will protest. And it will make no difference because, subject to judicial review, the adjudicator's decision is final."
	The future for these partially selective schools is that objections to their admissions policies will be made year after year. Eventually, a schools adjudicator will determine adversely against a school and, over time, not just cross-sibling priority for the Watford grammar schools but any sibling priority for any of the partially selective schools will be banned. We can argue over the rights and wrongs of sibling priority for those schools—I happen to believe that it is right—but the Government's approach of pursuing this objective while denying responsibility is somewhat cynical.
	For the sake of my constituents and these excellent schools, I genuinely hope that the Government will reconsider their approach, especially with regard to the transitional provisions for the Watford grammar schools and the cross-sibling issue. But let me be blunt. If the Government do not change course, it will be made abundantly clear that the responsibility for the attack on those schools, and the problems caused for many families in the Watford and surrounding areas, will lie at their feet.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) on securing this debate, although he probably did not envisage that it would occur quite so late at night. I appreciate that he is a strong advocate for his constituents' interests, and works hard to ensure that their views are heard. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Claire Ward) is also in her place at this late hour. As a Whip, she is precluded from speaking about these issues in the House, but I know that she has had discussions and been in correspondence with Ministers in the Department for Children, Schools and Families on this issue.
	I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees with the importance of fair access to the school system, and the key role that the school admissions code, and associated regulations, play in achieving that. The schools adjudicators have a crucial responsibility towards the ultimate aim of fair access for all children. Their role, in the admissions context, is both to enforce the mandatory provisions of the code and to consider objections from those, including parents, who consider that the arrangements might be disadvantaging particular groups in the community. It is therefore necessary and, indeed, right that they are truly independent. As the hon. Gentleman said, their rulings are final and cannot be overturned by political whim or public pressure. In order for them to act as the enforcers of the code, which was put in place by Parliament, that is how it must be.
	To give a flavour of their work, in 2007-08, 108 objections were received by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator from parents about admission arrangements. Of these, 90 were upheld or partially upheld. Nineteen were received from schools, of which nine were fully upheld or partially upheld. There are proposals to extend the role of the schools adjudicators in the Education and Skills Bill. This is so that they can consider arrangements that they think may be unlawful, however they come to their attention, rather than through a specific referral. In that way, we will be able to drive out poor practice in admissions arrangements, and ensure that every school place is awarded based on lawful criteria.
	We will also place a duty on local authorities to report annually to the chief schools adjudicator on the fairness, legality and effectiveness of the admission arrangements in their area. In that way, the admissions system will be more closely monitored to ensure that it moves closer to our goal of fair access. We are also clear that we should continue improving the system to be as fair and transparent as possible.
	We acknowledge that not every parent receives their first preference of school. However, in the 2008 secondary admissions round, 82 per cent. of parents received their first preference school and 94 per cent. received their first, second or third preference. According to the 2008 survey of parents in England, conducted by GFK Social Research, 78 per cent. of parents felt that the school place their child received was ideal, rather than the best school available under the circumstances. We have recently completed a public consultation on improvements to the school admissions code, and are currently analysing responses. I am pleased to note that many parents have taken part in this consultation. Some 29 per cent. of respondents were parents, and they formed the biggest group of respondents. We will respond publicly to the consultation in due course.
	On the issue of partial selection, as the hon. Gentleman will know, the law permits any school with a specialism in one of the prescribed subjects to give priority to a maximum of 10 per cent. of pupils on the basis of their aptitude for that subject. Schools that had arrangements in place in 1997 for the selection of some of their pupils by aptitude can keep those arrangements in place, provided they do not increase the proportion of pupils selected under those arrangements. No other new forms of selection by aptitude can now be introduced. As the hon. Gentleman is also aware, we strongly oppose any new selection by academic ability. There are 164 grammar schools still in existence, for which different arrangements apply. Only a small number of schools operated a partial selection system at the start of the 1997-98 academic year. They may continue to select a proportion of their pupils on the basis of high academic ability.
	Let me turn to the sibling rule. Where there is a high proportion of selection by ability or aptitude, the number of non-selective places is limited. Where such a school also gives priority for its non-selective places to children on the basis that they have an older sibling at the school, the number of non-selective places available to other children is reduced even further. Assuming that the younger siblings of children who passed a test of ability or aptitude would also be likely to pass such a test, we believe that the use of the sibling criterion in these schools can lead to a disproportionately high number of children being admitted who would have passed the selection test. The result is that a much reduced number of non-selective places are available for children from other families who would not have passed the selection test.
	That is why the school admissions code advises partially selective schools proposing to give priority to siblings that they should ensure that their admission arrangements as a whole do not exclude other families living nearer the school. However, the code does not prevent schools from giving priority to siblings of children at the school, but simply advises of the possible effects of doing so. It is for the independent schools adjudicator to decide on receipt of an objection whether the use of the criterion is fair in the local context.
	In 2007-08, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator received 40 objections about the use of the sibling rule, of which 38 were upheld or partially upheld. Twelve were from parents with a child already in the relevant school, 18 were from parents whose children were not yet in the school and 10 were from local authorities. However, we recognised in the code that some parents would have a reasonable expectation that their younger children could attend the same school as their older child. That is why we included the transitional arrangement to which the hon. Gentleman referred, which effectively prevents the adjudicator from upholding an objection to the sibling criterion at one of those schools as long as the older child was on roll at the school before the beginning of the 2008 school year.
	Let me move on to the situation in Watford. It would not be right for me to discuss that individual case in great detail, and I do not think that it is appropriate for me to comment on the adjudicator's judgment. My understanding from what the hon. Gentleman has said and from other discussions that I have had is that parents feel aggrieved because my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners agreed at a public meeting in 2006 that parents' reasonable expectations about admission arrangements should not be changed midway through the process.
	As far as I am aware, my hon. Friend gave no mention of the rather unusual arrangement for the cross-sibling rule at the meeting simply because he was not aware of it. I understand that he gave an undertaking, in all good faith, that parents who had children already at the school and therefore had a reasonable expectation that their younger children would follow should not be disadvantaged. He delivered on that commitment in the transitional arrangement to which I referred earlier.